Hive Mind
by ToxicSpeka
Summary: In an attempt to make clones of Shadow's healing properties to help him become the Ultimate Cure, Shadow ends up becoming the Ultimate Father (Now with a cover image of my terrible attempt of drawing a HM!)
1. Green Slime Blobs

_Got this idea yesterday and just had to write this_

* * *

"And… and with one more drop of the somatotropin sample," Tails whispered to himself, staring deeply into the microscope at the culture of cells as he added said drop with an eyedropper. The cells began to shift, and then, surprisingly, move and swim around in the culture. Tails gasped and pulled back, whooping and threw his hands into the air "Finally! It's alive!"

The lab was cold, but he was wiping the sweat from his forehead as he lifted the dish up to his face, way too close. He couldn't see the individual cells, but just the thought that they were there and alive was exciting enough.

"You sure this is a good idea, fox?" Shadow grunted from not so far behind, and the kit turned and beamed at him. He had been standing with him for a while, commenting about where should and shouldn't be done to his samples. He told the fox a lot of specifics, but truth be told, he didn't pay attention to half of them.

"Of course it is! Dr. Gerald left his notes on what he wanted you to be and do, Shadow. Can't you see that this is it?" He held the petri dish up to Shadow's face, uncomfortably close. The bio-hog flinched backward but did look at it. It just looked like thick blood in a puddle, and he internally shivered when he realized he once looked like that himself.

"I understand, but he also had forty years of practice before creating me." Shadow continued, pushing the dish a comfortable distance away "I do not want this to backfire."

The kit didn't seem to hear him at first, simply staring at the dish with poofed namesakes in excitement. He was whipping them back and forth so fast now Shadow was almost sure he was going to take off. Reluctantly, Shadow repeated himself, and the fox flicked his ears once he realized what the other said.

Tails frowned and set the dish back into place under its gentle heat lamp. "I know, Shadow. But, you're supposed to cure everyone of every disease! There's some not in your system, remember? New things have come up, and I know it's your personal goal to make everyone happy. She would have wanted that." He didn't look up, continuing to stare at the culture. Shadow, expectedly, did not like that he brought up Maria, but he had been dealing with that for a while now and was more mature about it.

"True." was all the hedgehog said, and then he turned and began to leave. "Don't stay up late; else I'll get a hearing from that blue brother of yours."

Shadow had never gotten yelled at for not telling Tails to get to bed before, but he needed a way to say it without sounding too 'not Shadow.' Tails waved him goodbye but only proceeded to mess with the culture again.

While they were talking, he noticed that it was growing at an alarming rate, much faster than any cells should have. It was growing fast enough to be seen with the naked eye. Working quickly yet carefully, Tails set up the dish under the microscope again and put his eye to the lens.

"Shadow heals fast, but not this fast..." he murmured to himself, going over to his cabinet to pull out more petri dishes and a few test tubes. He split the sample cells, accurately named 'UC 3/12', multiple times and put them into the new dishes and tubes with more culture, hoping the bloody mix would cut down on the amount of somatotropin he added.

Slowly, his eyes turned to the side, where his mini-fridge sat. Tails hummed and kneeled to open it, going through the various snacks to pull out the blood bag hanging in the back.

"That's probably unsanitary," He told himself but shrugged and stood up anyway. Those snacks had been there for weeks, but Shadow had just given him his blood the day before. The kit looked at the green liquid sloshing around and almost changed his mind.

Almost.

He drained nearly a fourth of the bag and used a syringe to inject Shadow's blood directly into the cultures. His idea was simple; Shadow's blood was what started the healing process when exposed to air, and when it wasn't, it kept everything from healing when it didn't need to. So, once he was done adding the blood, he sealed everything and stepped back.

He wasn't a chemist, more of an inventor, but Shadow admitted that he did not trust anyone to be working with his body or powers yet. Tails was the only exception, as Tails said he would come to Shadow right away should anything bad begin to happen. However, the fox figured he had everything down pat and gathered the samples under the light to work their magic.

Once everything was put away, he turned off the light to his lab and made his way upstairs to a pretty miffed Shadow.

"Did anything happen? You were down there for another hour after I left." He growled, but Tails held up his hands and shook his head.

"Nope, nothing happened. Your cells are growing, a bit faster than I wanted, but other than that nothing of interest happened." He neglected to tell Shadow that he did add the hedgehog's blood afterward, but shrugged it off. It was merely added to stop them from growing too fast, nothing bad could come of it, right?

Shadow seemed to accept that answer and turned his back to the kit.

"Where are you off to?" Tails asked, not too concerned, but in a more caring way.

"It's 2 AM, the hour where sad saps and lonely idiots to crowd to Club Rouge. It's also the time where twelve-year-old foxes go to bed and stop messing with cells and cultures." Shadow half-heartedly glared over his shoulder, then shook his head and left for Club Rouge.

Tails whined at how Shadow addressed him, but smiled softly and did head to bed. He was exhausted and had been working for hours nonstop just for this one sample actually to live. He had made three series by now of the 'ultimate cure,' and that was his twelfth attempt of that series. It was back breaking work, but he was proud of himself.

The kit yawned and made his way up the second set of stairs to the bedrooms, but going to the bathroom first to wash himself off before going straight to his room and collapsing on the bed. He drifted into a deep sleep quickly.

Xx

"There he is! Look! It's Super Tails!" A woman squealed, pointing to the fox gently descending from the sky with a bright light shining behind him.

Tails touched the white beach sand and stood tall, before being crowded by men and women mobians and humans alike, all chanting and calling his name. They bent sharply and kissed his shoes, smiling up at him, some even crying.

"Look at his long, luscious fur!"

"Look at his beautiful baby blue eyes!"

"Look at his double tails! I want double tails!"

The kit chuckled under his breath and waved his hand, making them part so he could begin to walk the length of the beach. Sonic hounded up to him and grinned ear to ear. "Big bro! I haven't seen you in so long! Eggbutt is at it again in Station Square, and we can't beat him without you!" Sonic cried, and Tails gasped.

"He is!? Where is everyone else-? No matter, this is a job for Super Tails!" He pounded a fist on his chest and struck a pose, where magically a cape formed over his shoulders and began to blow in the non-existent wind. Tails rose his fist into the air and flew upwards, hovering mid-air while the crowd below him took up chanting again.

"Super Tails! Super Tails! Super Tails!" they shouted in unison.

Oddly enough, their chanting started to not sound like words, and more of gentle clinking and clanking sounds coming from their wide open mouths. Tails looked down with concern and shook his head a bit, opening his mouth to try to correct them, but they just continued

He looked at Sonic, and he was making the noise too. Utterly freaked out, he dove straight towards the ocean.

xx

The kit sat up straight and huffed a few times to catch his breath, looking around his room. Nothing was wrong, but it was now around four thirty. "My dream was not that long," he told himself, even though he knew most dreams only lasted a few seconds.

Tails got out of bed groggily and opened his door just to be met with the sound of a small piece of glass shattering coming from the lab. Something was definitely happening down there. He shook his head clear and smoothed back the fur between his ears, making his way down the hallway to the stairs. He heard Sonic groan and then shift in his bed, so Tails stilled, waiting for his brother to do the same. Once he calmed down, he rushed the rest of way down, not bothering to put on his shoes before rushing down the hardwood stairs and with the grace of jellyfish on stilts, crashed and tumbled down them immediately.

"Why," he groaned, rolling onto his side "Do I have an IQ of three hundred but fall down the stairs every week?" the kit laid there for a while, slowly recovering from the rough few landings he did on the stairs and then finally the carpet. Then, he heard a squelching sound and remembered the reason he was rushing in the first place.

Tails got to his feet and jogged to the stairs leading to the lab, this time being careful to amble on this set, then opened the door and blindly reached for the light switch. He groped the wall for a few seconds, and when he found it and flicked it on, nearly screamed and fainted right then and there.

There were these blobs of green slime, small, about the palm of a hand, crawling along the table and some on the floor. There were eight of them. The exact number Tails had split the primary sample into…

He carefully stepped around the glass, twisting his tails to get him into the air and away from the sharp shards. The slimes didn't seem bothered by them anyway, and one promptly slid and fell off the table, falling right onto a large shard from a test tube but not reacting.

"What are you!?" Tails hissed, picking up and sliding on his hazmat gloves to huddle each slime creature into the containment bay area. They gurgled and wriggled in protest at him touching them, but oddly enough had a definite shape to them. Each had a small black orb in the middle of it.

"You look like gross, melting eyes..." The kit flew up and closed the container, tossing his gloves into a decontamination solution to watch the blobs move around. "Why did you grow so fast?" He mostly asked himself.

Tails hummed in thought, considering something slightly dumb. Shadow would know, right? The fox left for his bedroom to get his phone then returned to the lab, pulling out his chair and facing it to the blobs. Eight of them. All were moving mindlessly.

He shook his head and frizzed his tails, calling the dark agent and staring straight ahead in a panic.

"Why are you awake, Tails?" It came as a growl. No 'hello.'

"I-I had a weird dream. Say, what did you tell me about your blood again?" He swallowed a lump in his throat. Tails flinched when he heard Shadow breathe slowly through his nose, mumbling something he couldn't quite make out. Then.

"It reacts when in contact with direct light and oxygen. Why?"

"No-reason-gotta-go-bye!" Tails squealed and hung up, just for Shadow to call again. He didn't answer.

He had left the samples under light for them to cure, not grow.

"This is fine," He said gawkily, going up to the tank and looking in. The black orbs looked slightly bigger. "That's fine. I can work with this, and Shadow doesn't have to know! Isn't that right, balls of possible flesh that look like they want to kill me if I pick them up?" Tails grinned in absolute fear.

Tired, he stepped back and grabbed his broom, sweeping up the glass and tossing it out. Oddly enough, the blobs didn't leave a slimy trail. The ground seemed slightly cleaner where they traveled, along with the metal table, too.

Not having any idea what to do with them for the time being, Tails made more culture on a much larger scale and flew up with a bucket of it, dumping it in over the green and black blobs and watching them get buried under it. It was disconcerting to see them moving and squelching around through the bloody mess but figured it was a bad idea to add any more of Shadow's actual blood. Plasma and type-o worked best.

"Just don't break out of this, okay? I think Shadow would probably kill me, and...you all if he found out you existed. Deal? Deal." He held up a thumbs up then turned off all the lights before going up to his bed.

What he didn't notice was how erratic the blobs became once they heard Shadow's name.


	2. Plus A Pissed Hedgehog

Tails woke up in a somewhat awkward rather painful position, laying upside down halfway off the bed. He had been having constant nightmares about the creatures he created, all of them aboiut them growing to be sentient and either taking over or destroying the world. There was one dream, in particular, that was of Shadow finding out and, true to his word, killing the creature and then Tails.

The fox shivered and got out of bed.

He didn't bother to put socks on at first, but after his shower, figured it would be a better idea than to go barefoot all morning. He passed his brother's room and peeked in, seeing Sonic staring at the ceiling with a somewhat angry expression.

"Still got a fever?" Tails asked, and Sonic barely even shifted to turn to him before hissing in pain.

"Y-yeah, you could say that," Sonic growled, but just closed his eyes again. "But I'm not gonna drink that terrible soup!"

"You're so stubborn," Tails laughed, leaving his brother be to go downstairs to make breakfast.

He made a mental checklist, realized it was Saturday, then settled on making Saturday breakfast even though they were missing the fruit he would typically add.

Tails hummed happily to himself as he cooked, swishing back and forth and even dancing slightly. He had completely forgotten about his nightmares and what happened last night, more or less focussing on his sick brother and the awesome breakfast he was making.

"Fox kit," Tails jumped, instinctively grabbing the closet thing to him to hold up and cower behind. Shadow was a step ahead and grabbed the hot, still-in-use skillet from his hand and hurridly put it back in place before anything spilled out of it.

"S-Shadow! What are y-you doing here?" Tails stood up and brushed himself off, ignoring how Shadow was wiping at his hands to get the sting of heat off of them. Another thing he would apologize for.

"...You told me to visit you first thing in the morning, last night." Shadow sighed, crossing his arms instead. "And if you look at the calendar, you'll find that no one goes to clubs on Saturday mornings."

"Oh." Tails mumbled, finishing off the food and setting it on two plates. He looked up apologetically, but Shadow didn't seem at all concerned. "Sorry for not making enough for you, I kinda forgot you were coming over..."

Shadow finally tore his gaze away from the second set of stairs to look at the fox, only to shrug. "That doesn't matter, I've switched to Chaos energy anyway."

Shadow turned and made his way to the stairs and Tails gulped in fear, slamming his plate down on the table and flying upstairs to give Sonic his own.

"Breakfast in bed? Sweet!" Sonic called quietly, and Tails nodded and flew back downstairs to his lab door to see Shadow standing there, slightly irritated.

"Why is the door locked?" He said it evenly, but there was hidden malice behind his words.

"S-safety precautions! You never know when a burgular might break in and steal all your stuff!" Tails stalled. Shadow didn't buy a lick of it and put his hand on the handle, pressing down even though it was still locked. The metal clicked in protest, and Shadow narrowed his eyes.

"O-okay! I locked it because I-I'm trying to close doors behind me more!" Tails flew up to reach the small hidden panel on the wall, pulling it off and taking out the key. Shadow grabbed for it once he was close enough, but Tails pulled his hand back.

"You are really testing my patience, Miles. Why are you trying to keep me from going down there?" Shadow fully snapped, a clawed hand snatching the fox's wrist in a firm, almost painful grip. The kit whimpered and tried to pull his hand free, but Shadow gnashing his teeth at him made him give up.

"B-be...because I don't know how you'll react..." Tails finally admitted, and Shadow calmly let him go and stepped to the side. Tails' ears and namesakes lowered in defeat as he shakily unlocked the door.

"What could have happened that would make me act erratically?" the agent demanded, and Tails shrugged.

"I... used your blood to mix with the culture. I thought that would _stop_ them from growing too fast."

Shadow bit his tongue to stop himself from yelling at the already terrified fox, knowing that he had told him time and time again not to do that, but he did it anyway.

The door finally unlocked and slid open without a sound, opening to semi-darkness. The sun was beaming in through the high windows, barely lighting up the place. The two made their way inside, and Shadow looked to the table, expecting the sample to be in the same location Tails had it last, but it wasn't there. In fact, the entire table was wiped clean, with nothing on it at all.

"Where...is it?" Shadow spoke slowly, looking at the ground just below that table, until an odd, screeching noise sounded out and he spun around with chaos energy crackling under his palm.

"Oh, they're bigger than they were last night." Tails said calmly, and Shadow drew closer to what he was talking about.

In the tank in front of them sat eight almost clones of him, the size of newborns. They were sitting upright but hunched over, with pure green eyes and no pupils. Their white muzzles had mouths dripping this liquid that fizzled and burned out into nothing on the ground they sat on, and weirdly enough, their jaws were shaped more doglike. They each had a total of twelve fingers and toes, two toes on each foot and four claws on each hand. The spikes on their backs were tipped green, and so was the inside of their ears, along with a tail their body length that had a green and red point on the end of it.

The only real resemblance they had to Shadow was that they had his general body shape, the same type and shape and color of his fur and quills, and the same white patch of fur on their chests.

"What have you _done?"_ Shadow groaned, not moving from his spot. Once he spoke, their ears perked up and they becan to gurgle and make odd clicking sounds, pressing against and beating at the glass to get closer to them.

"Alright, you can kill them and me now..." Tails slumped, fully expecting Shadow to hit him, but the bio-hedgehog just set his hand on his back.

"Just let them out and turn around, I'll make this quick."

Tails did just that. He pressed the button on the wall to realease them, and they launched out to crawl after Shadow on all fours, not on their hands and knees. Instead of turning around, Tails stared at him. Shadow raised his hand, building up a chaos spear and looking pointedly at one of them. Immediately, before he could even attack, the rest of them turned and began to snarl and hiss at the one Shadow singled out. It backed up in fear, screeching and looking around and back up at Shadow.

A surge of pity rang through him, and the energy dissipated into thin air. "Stop, that's-" He didn't get to finish his sentence before they did, stopping all sounds and threats and turning back to Shadow. The one that had been singled out dropped its head and panted in relief, sinking to the floor to rest.

"Shadow, do you know what this means?" Tails came up behind him just as Shadow dropped his arms, looking at the creatures in slight confusion.

"No, but I have a feeling you're going to tell me anyway-"

"These are hive minds! You know, how Black Doom used to do? But since They're made with _your_ DNA, you're their leader!" The kit ran up to one of them, but it didn't seem to see him at all.

"So when I try to pick them up or tell them what to do," he did, and it began to squeal and thrash, trying to get out of his hold. Tails set it back down, and it started to groom itself like nothing happened. "It lashes out! But if _you_ tell it what to do, it listens!"

Shadow frowned. "Didn't Black Doom use those to destroy part of the Earth and almost turned me into one of them so I could blow up the rest of the Earth?" He deadpanned and, sensing his stress, the hive minds went to his feet and rubbed against him.

"Well, yeah, but you're not Black Doom. You're Shadow." Tails said matter-of-factly, and Shadow hid the small smile that threatened to show. He didn't expect someone calling him his own name would calm him down like that, but he didn't want the kit to know that.

"...I can't let you kill them, Shadow." Tails sighed, setting a hand on his shoulder. He ignored how the hive minds hissed at him touching their leader. "They're not what I tried to do, but I still have to see what they can help me with."

That, he couldn't argue with. Shadow nodded, though something was bothering him. Tails turned and came back with a needle, showing it to the hedgehog.

"Its just the flu, but I need to start with something."

Shadow shook his head. "That seems wrong. Even up on ARK, I wasn't simply thrust into tests right away. I was given a week." That wasn't true, he actually had five days, but it still felt wrong for the things to be immediately injected with something no matter how harmless it was.

"Oh, you're right. Say, do you think they eat or run off chaos energy?"

"I really do not want to stay around to find out." Shadow didn't even make it one step before they crowded his legs even more, nearly holding him in place if he wasn't so strong. "I guess that's a shame, then."

"Ooh! We should name them!" Tails picked up one, ignoring it's yelp and then scream.

"If they shut up whenever someone other than me touches them, sure." the agent hissed. The hive minds, while somewhat cute, seemed like they were going to be too much of a hassle. "Well, you called them Hive Minds. What's wrong with that name?"

Tails poked the one he was holding on the nose, and it swatted at him, baring its teeth and looking to Shadow. The hedgehog barely showed any emotion, and finally, the creature calmed down and let Tails hold it. "Nah, I mean like real names. Like how your name is Shadow and mine is Miles?"

"How about Bothersome times eight?" Shadow hissed through his teeth. The Hive Minds realized Shadow didn't like them and backed away, gurgling what sounded like nonsense.

"Shadow! Look what you did, they're sad now!" Tails stroked the hair of the one he was holding, and, surprisingly, it didn't protest.

"They aren't sad; they're telling me to command them to show how useful they are."

Tails went to disagree, then paused. "Wait, they're talking to you?"

* * *

 _wassup._ i _was gonna draw what they look like, but that can but up to interpretation. I will post what they do look like within the week or next, probably_


	3. And Tails (who's just trying to help)

Shadow looked down at the eight infants in something akin to annoyance and curiosity. He didn't entirely know how they were alive or surviving, or exactly why they were hive minds. He picked one up, and it seemed overly pleased at being held, then looked at the others smugly. Shadow had to smirk at that; they did have his genes, then. Shadow pressed his ear to its small chest and heard a heart beating, and felt the expanding and contraction of his ribs, and heard squishing of organs, but he didn't know what organs it had.

Shadow didn't know if they ate or slept or understood most knowledge, all he knew was that he was apparently their father and leader. He shuddered and set the creature down. He did _not_ want to think of himself as a father. Especially not to _eight_ children.

"I can't even tell you all apart." Shadow breathed through his nose and looked towards the door, wondering what was taking Tails so long to return.

A tiny claw grabbed his leg, and he kicked it off, glaring down at the creature below him. "Don't ever touch me." he hissed, and it backed up, looking at him with wide eyes. The others hissed at it and began to single it out, barking and crying until it was a suitable distance away from Shadow.

The agent crossed his arms and folded back his ears, ignoring them thoroughly by turning his back to them. He was not going to, _refused_ , even, to take care of them. Children were already not his strong point, and he scared them if not threatened to hurt them for simply doing children stuff. He once threatened to tear off a child's arm if it continued to pester him. While he did get it to stop, it also ran crying to its mother and caused him to get into an argument with a furious cat mother who didn't seem too pleased that Shadow hated kids. He had to remind her multiple times that not all people liked to be bothered.

Whimpering snapped him out of his thoughts, and he looked over his shoulder, seeing all the hiveminds raising their paws up to him, almost begging him to not hate them. Shadow sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose.

"Get this through your skulls right here and now; You only exist to cure. You're not-"

"AND I'm back! Please tell me when I open my eyes I won't see blood all over the place!" Tails laughed, but there was pure fear in his voice, and, true to his word, his eyes were closed. He was holding a tray with eight... empty baby bottles stacked on it?

"No blood yet," Shadow called, and the kit opened his eyes just to see Shadow looking pointedly at the bottles.

"Oh, well. Ya know, they're infants?" Tails chuckled, "The lady at the store was very confused."

"I am as well." Shadow hissed.

The kit ignored that comment and gave Shadow one of the cartons of milk he bought, pointing at some of the bottles as he filled the rest. "I had to fly to the store and back; I didn't have time to fill them up."

Shadow said nothing but did as he was instructed. He doubted they would take to the bottles, but it was worth a shot. Once each bottle was full of lukewarm milk, which Shadow admitted was disgusting in his opinion, they called over the Hive Minds,

It took a bit of forcing and a few nipped fingers, but they eventually got the nipples into the infants' mouths, and they began drinking like it was second nature to them.

"Also, have you thought of names yet?"

"You sound like an excited new mother."

Tails frowned at him "Well! Technically!" He then pointed to one in particular, which had now laid on its back and curled its tail around the bottle to hold it steady, "I wanna call that one Steve."

Shadow groaned and looked at the fox, slightly worried for him. "Are you insane? Why Steve? These are experiments."

"Your name was Ultimate Lifeform, so I don't think you get much of a say in whether or not I call that one Steve." Tails shot back. Shadow opened his mouth but didn't have much of a comeback for that. His name did use to be Ultimate Lifeform before being given the nickname Shadow.

"Fine. That one's Steve, then. Answer me this, how do you know which ones are girls or not, then?" Shadow said instead, and it was the fox's turn to be stumped. He picked up Steve, and it screamed, as expected, to lift it up.

"Uh... Shadow, did you have genitals when you were first created?"

"It was pretty much an afterthought to give me male reproductive organs."

Tails frowned. "Then these are all 'Its', then."

Shadow didn't seem to be paying attention.

All of them had a sort of personality. One was half-asleep but still drinking, another was almost done with theirs but was still going strong, two others were having a contest of who could drink faster, One had barely drunk any, and the rest were either finished with their bottle or had ripped off the nipple and dumped the contents all over themselves. A thought crossed Shadow's mind.

"Tell me this, Tails. What comes after Input?" Shadow asked sweetly, and the fox looked over to him with a weak glare.

"You weren't even listening..." He mumbled "Output. Why?"

"So, milk is input, correct?" Shadow continued.

It took a second for the fox to put two and two together, but once he did, he rushed to Shadow and dumped Steve into his arms and sprinted up the stairs, screaming 'DIAPERS!' all the way.

The agent sneered and set the hive mind down, standing up to go up the stairs and back into the living room. He had half a mind to shut the door behind him, but it was too late, as the hive minds had followed him up and out at his heels.

"Annoying," Shadow growled under his breath, then stilled and strained his ears. There was a sound coming from upstairs, so, he followed it.

And the hive minds followed him, but that was collateral damage.

"Tails? That you? I think my temperature's high again! I need more orange juice!" Sonic called through the door, fully expecting his brother to be on the other side. One arm was draped over his eyes while the other held out his empty cup.

"The fox left," Shadow smirked. At his voice, Sonic yelped and dropped his cup, and it hit the ground with a plastic thud, the hedgehog quickly looking up to Shadow.

He was a bit worse for wear. He had bags under his eyes, and his muzzle was pale but flushed, along with his fur matted down by sweat and quills frizzed from laying in the bed for so long.

"Fever?" His first thought was to leave him be to suffer without his beloved orange juice, and then his second thought was to go ahead and heal him so he wouldn't get blames for letting him stay sick, but apparently, a hive mind had a better idea.

It leaped onto Sonic, and both of them screamed, Sonic out of fear while the hive mind out of being held up from Sonic trying to get rid of it, still out of fear. It hissed louder, and the blue hedgehog dropped it, and it rose it's tail high and then stabbed the tip of it straight into Sonic's stomach.

"Ow! What is this thing!? Why did it- Oh, I feel better," Sonic sat up, and the hive mind pulled its tail out of Sonic's skin, jumping off his lap to curl around Shadow's leg. Sonic followed it with his eyes, then gasped.

"Why is there _eight_ of them!?"

* * *

 _i've hit a writer's block kill me this chapter was so hard to write, too._

also _suggest names, can't think of any right now lol_

 _Next chapter will be good, I promise._


	4. Equals A Tub Full of Screaming Children

After a very confusing fiasco between Sonic and the Hive minds, which all gladly harbored Shadow's hidden dislike for the blue hedgehog, Shadow was unceremoniously thrown out of Sonic's room and told he could only stay in the lab or living room. It wasn't like he was going to listen to him, but he also didn't favor sitting still with anything productive to do.

Well, Shadow did have something to do. A good portion of the infants had at least half of the milk inside of them and another half on the inside, and while he secretly hoped they would absorb it through their skin, that didn't seem to be the case. Luckily, they did follow him wherever he went, and barely had any knowledge of the outside world. So, when he went into the bathroom and shut the door behind him, they continued to babble near nonsense to each other and bob their heads in bliss.

Shadow turned to the bathtub, kneeled, and ran the water. Curiosity set in and they trotted up to the flowing water and stood up to stick their hands in it. When they deemed it nontoxic, they collectively crawled in and tried to get more of the liquid in the tub. It took Shadow a solid minute to pry their small hands, paws, and tails out of the faucet and drain to finally stop up the drain. Once the tub began to fill, the bathroom was full of screams of either terror and excitement, but at that point, Shadow didn't even know if he cared which.

"I'm going to pour this in, and I promise if anyone tries to eat the damn bubbles-..." Shadow cut his threat short to turn the bottle of liquid soap, the first he saw _(Mr. Bubble? Really, Sonic?)_ , upside down and pour a good amount of the pink goop into the rushing water. A pleasant scent of candy began to rise, along with fluffy, white bubbles.

The Hive minds suddenly growing quiet was concerning, so Shadow looked to them, loofah he stole from Tails' pack in hand, along with hedgehog quill shampoo.

The infants, mainly Steve, were holding up handfuls of bubbles and frozen in place. Shadow then noticed the trickle of water dripping down the side of his face. He narrowed his eyes but didn't feel angry. "Did you all put bubbles in my quills?"

Simultaneously, they all pointed to Steve, who looked around wildly at being singled out. Shadow stopped the water's flow once it was high enough, then dragged his hand over his quills and collected the surprisingly large amount of foamy soap, then turned his hand over and accidentally hit Steve on top of his head a bit harder than he intended. He wasn't bothered by the hit at all. But, the Hive minds' eyes traveled to the soap that exploded everywhere and splattered against the walls from the half-hearted attack.

Then, Shadow single handily started a war.

The Hive minds found if they twirled their tails under the water just right, more of the soft, annoying ammunition would build up, and if they clapped their hands over it, that would cause a mini explosion.

Shadow didn't have such a luxury of being about to stop them, as his eyes and mouth were either full of soap and water or closed shut to prevent such soap and water from filling them. Whenever he did have a second to breathe, the bathroom was a battle ground of either Shadow screaming curses and insults or the Hive minds just screaming.

The bio-hedgehog scrambled and grabbed whatever squirming body part he could grab in the chaos that was now the bathroom and scrubbed at it until it managed to wiggle out of his grasp.

"This was supposed to be easy, _heathens_!" Shadow hissed, standing up to access the damage. All the water and soap that was in the tub was now out the tub and onto the floor, which Shadow knew he would be forced to clean up. Each infant was coated in shampoo, wet, and now cold, as all the warm water was now cold and flooding the floor and soaking Shadow's fur, gloves, and socks alike.

He pinched the bridge of his nose.

"I **hate** children." He wouldn't admit that it was slightly fun at first.

He opened the door only long enough to grab all the towels from the towel racks, unfortunately only being five, then closed it again. He did happen to glance down and see a small river of soapy bath water running through the hallway.

Shadow peeled off his wet clothing and threw them into the sink, then stepped into the tub and pulled the shower door closed. It left enough of a gap on the tub to sit comfortably, or at least somewhat, and Shadow pulled down the showerhead but didn't turn the water on.

"Listen. You all are cold; I'm soaked. We all want to get out of here. Now if you bastard children sit still and allow me to wash that shampoo out of your fur, we can leave." He reasoned, then waved his hand for one of them to come closer.

The hive minds were shivering, and all shuffled closer to him, pushing each other but recoiling each time they touched as they would only get colder from the contact. Eventually, one pushed forward, and Shadow lifted it and sat it on his lap. He worked the shampoo through and then out of its quills and fur, then set it on the rim of the tub.

Shadow worked slowly, washing each one thoroughly and carefully, making sure to get behind their ears and even on their ever wiggling tails and between their fingers and toes. He found himself smiling somewhat because when they all were quiet, he was having a pleasant time washing them.

Once they were all clean, and Shadow stood to rinse himself much faster than he did for the Hive minds, he ushered them out of the bathroom and into the guest room. They huddled together under the towels, all five, as Shadow convinced them he would be okay without one and jumped up onto the bed.

Shadow went back into the bathroom to clean up everything, along with his gloves and socks, which were the only pair he brought considering he only planned on visiting for an hour or so, not the entire day. He hung them up to dry and left to the bed barefoot, looking out the window.

It was about mid afternoon, and judging by the mix of what he was smelling, Sonic had made lunch a little while ago and was now either working on or just finished dinner.

The agent stretched and yawned, looking to the lumps barely shifting around under the cover. The towels had been shed and discarded, leaving them to their shameful fate of dirty, wet, and on the ground. He peeled them off and tossed them into the hamper, and his ear flicked back to hear the front door slam open and closed with the shrill, tired voice of Tails scream for him.

"Upstairs," he answered calmly, but it was mainly because he was too wearied himself to raise his voice any higher.

Tails took up the stairs slowly, finding Shadow standing in the doorway.

Tails was covered in lipstick marks, clutching a bag of presumably diapers and wipes, hopefully, like his life depended on it. He was out of breath, sweating, and hunched over.

"I won't ask. Kids are in bed. It took about two hours to bath them, and I think I exhausted them." Shadow waved him to the bedroom, and Tails nodded but also didn't ask why it took two hours to bathe eight children that wanted to sit around.

"I got the diapers and stuff." He offered, "I had such a bad time trying to learn how to put them on, Shadow. You just don't know. I'm so tired I don't think I can even eat dinner tonight, and tonight's Spaghetti night."

Shadow shrugged. He lifted the cover carefully, exposing the Hive minds to the gentle lamp light. They all hissed under their breaths and tried to cover their eyes with the end of their tails and hands. Tails gave him a short rundown on how to put the diapers on, and they easily got each child wrapped up and moved to better spots on the bed.

Shadow sat down, leaned against the headrest, and closed his eyes. "One healed Sonic while you were gone."

"Oh," Tails yawned, then rubbed his eye. Was Shadow going to sleep just then and there? "That's why he's so up and about. While I was going upstairs he told me he got stabbed, but I figured that was a weird dream of his." the kit looked to the Hive minds beginning to surround and crawl on top of Shadow, and, he wrapped his arms around those close enough.

"Aww, I didn't know you had a heart." Tails joked, waiting for a snap or a snarl, but it didn't come. He got closer and leaned down, then chuckled lightly. Shadow _was_ asleep.

"Well, I guess you deserve it. I'll get you back for wetting literally all the towels, but that can wait. Goodnight, Shadow." As an afterthought, he ran his hand over Shadow's head, and then scratched each Hivemind behind the ear. Surprisingly, they leaned into the touch and didn't scream at him.

He was sure he faintly heard Shadow purring, but chalked it up to being tired.

* * *

 _hey fun fact, Tails was originally gonna fall asleep with Shadow and the hive minds, but I took it out because it seemed too shippy or something_


	5. Also Sonic Doesn't Understand Handshakes

"Hey, Tails, buddy?" Sonic asked slowly, looking down from the top of the stairs. After a brief second of waiting, Tails burst out fron the kitchen and waved up at him.

"Yeah?" The fox was holding a tray of half-full bottles of warm milk, beaming up at his brother without a care in the world. It was an odd sight, but Sonic didn't question it.

It was very stressing to wake up, take a bath, and then find out that every single towel was used and still not dry. Sonic had to use the blowdrier on himself, making his quills and fur puffy, so he had to brush it all down. A simple five minute dry turned into thirty, and when he was finally done with that...

"Can you tell me why there's seven little Shadows hissing at me? I honestly just walked into the guest room to grab some gloves from the drawer and seven of them came out from under the covers like demons." Sonic spoke evenly and sweetly, but there was clear terror in his voice. Their screeches could easily be heard echoing through the hall and down the stairs, but his brother shrugged like it wasn't a big deal.

"Oh, that's because those probably weren't your gloves that you took. And seven? shouldn't there be eight?" The kit hobbled up the stairs, carefully balancing the tray with one hand while holding onto the banister with the other.

The Hive minds, or, at least, seven of them, were hissing and glaring at him, brandishing their sharp tipped tails like they were going to stab him. They didn't even stop when their bottles came into view, so Tails called Sonic to meet in the guest room.

The blue speed demon had to awkwardly dance through the hall, as every time he lifted his foot one of the kids replaced the spot he was going to step. They never touched him, but didn't move if they were nudged, and their claws dug into the floor so they couldn't be slid out the way.

One they got inside, they saw that Shadow was dead to the world, his shoes on the floor next to the bed and his socks, which finally dried, on top of the bedside table. The last Hive mind, Steven, was trapped in Shadow's arms in a tight cuddling hug and couldn't free himself. He was wriggling but each movement made Shadow tighten his hold until the child was buried in his chest fur.

"See? You took Shadow's gloves instead of the spare inside the drawer." Tails set the tray on the table just as Sonic came in, where the toddlers quieted down to low hisses and glares only so their wouldn't wake Shadow.

"Well, _sor-ry_ , little baby demons. You can take your gloves back." He peeled them off, noticing that they _were_ a bit too big and not of a normal fit, and tossed them towards the bed. Before they hit, two of them jumped up and caught a glove each. He chuckled and clapped, as that _was_ slightly impressive.

The rest shut up immediately and crawled back onto the bed and under the covers, nuzzling up against Shadow's body. The agent didn't stir, but at least let go of Steve a bit so he could pull his face free. Shadow looked peace and relaxed.

That was, until Sonic called out loudly and abruptly woke up the dark agent simply out of playful spite.

Shadow sat up with a yell of surprise and flailed his arms, claws extended to hit whatever was close. The Hive minds woke up with him and sensed his stress, kicking the cover off their bodies and running around on the bed to ward off whatever caused Shadow to freak out. It would have been cute if it wasn't eight small screaming children with voices so high they could probably easily shatter glass. Or eardrums. You know, whatever's closer.

Shadow slamming his hands down on the bed did make them all stop and revert back to loving little annoying toddlers, which confused him. "Did you all get bigger?"

Of course, they didn't know and didn't answer other than the usual gurgle he could barely translate. The two with Shadow's gloves attempted to put them on for him, but failed miserably, so Shadow did so himself. It was the thought that counted.

"So, Shadow, you're the ultimate mom now huh?" Sonic chuckled, going over to the bed and reaching over to one of the Hive minds. It hissed at him and he snatched his hand back.

"No." he sneered.

"Not entirely, we're rasing them for a few more days before they can be tested and stuff." Tails picked up a bottle and Steven, setting him in his lap to feed him.

"Aw how come you get to hold them?" Sonic pouted, and while he and Tails began to talk and almost argue about them, Shadow gathered the rest into a neat pile and had them hold their own bottles.

Again, some tore the nipples off and drank messily, and others drank all the milk within seconds. All of the Hive minds had their own way to get their food down, not like any of them were better than the other, but they were individuals at least. Then, one of them collapsed and fear shot through Shadow.

"Are you okay...?" He whispered, completely ignoring the brothers chatting idly behind him. Shadow shook it slightly, but it still didn't move. He set it in his lap, putting his ear to its chest, but pulled back in confused fear. It was breathing, and its heart was beating, but just barely. The other Hive minds noticed his fear and tossed their bottles, including Steve, which made Tails finally notice and turn.

"W-wake up?" Shadow didn't know why he was so afraid. He didn't really care that much about them, right? Just experiments. There were a ton of experiments on ARK. What happened when they stopped moving? What... happened? His eyes widened with realization.

"Shadow, what's going on? Why isn't he moving?" Tails' voice finally registered in his mind and the agent looked iver his shoulder, but froze when another Hive mind collapsed onto the bed.

"I don't know, I don't know, I don't know," He chanted, setting up the other in his lap as well.

"Hey Shadz, don't you pass out when you use all your energy?" Sonic asked casually, causing the panicking mammals to pause and then slowly put two and two together.

Sighing, Shadow took his emerald from his quills and laid it on the bed, where Tails took the limp infants from him and put them around the gem. They perked up immediately, so the rest happily surrounded the gem as well and comforted the two that passed out. Had the dark agent liked Sonic just a bit more, he would probably hug him, but outstretched his arm instead for an intended handshake. Sonic slapped their hands together in more of a highfive and ran out the room before Shadow could correct him, but that seemed like the typical Sonic.

"...I could have thought of that too, you know." Tails murmured, Shadow looking at him in slight disbelief.

"I heard you start to panic."

"Please! You were about to burst into tears over there!" Tails dhot back, but Shadow glaring at him seriously made him back down and shrink.

"I do _not_ cry." He hissed. The Hive minds agreed right behind him, a bit hesitant, as they grew to like Tails, but followed Shadow's emotion right away.

"I get it, I understand. Sorry, I was just playing around..." the kit stood and took the discarded bottles, the two now awkwardly silent and refusing to look at each other.

Shadow thought about apologizing, but didn't. He simply put on his socks and shoes and kicked his legs off the bed.

Eventually, the hive minds were all perked up and gurgling balls of barely contained raw energy that refused to sit still. The dark hedgehog had been left alone with them, Tails leaving to go downstairs to do something or another, but he didn't tell what. Shadow rubbed the side of his face and began to head down as well, but a constant beeping on his wrist stopped him.

"Rouge--?"

"Get down to the base _now_." Rouge whimpered, sounding extremely unlike herself. She was afraid, and Rouge was never afraid.

The agent nodded and told her he would be there right away, running downstairs and right into the fox kit, who had been doing something with Sonic. There was not much time, so he summed up everything.

"Rouge called, please watch them. Sorry." He teleported away without another word.

The brothers looked around, not too sure on what happened, but continued their conversation anyway. "Didn't Eggman warn us that something big would be happening soon?"

"Yeah, bud. He gave us three day warning. What's with him and three days?" Sonic smirked, making his brother chuckle and shrug.

"Dunno. What do you think it'll be this time? A giant crab? A puma spliced with an ostrich? What would he even want, anyway?" Tails looked down, still smiling.

"I bet all of the above. We have _one_ emerald, Shadow has one, and other than the big rock Knux is protecting, none of us have any more." Sonic slowly followed Tails' gauze.

The Hive minds looked dull-eyed, like they were powered down robots. Leaning against each other as if it was hard to sit up straight.

"... Didn't you say there were eight of them?" The blue blue continued, squating next to them and doing another head count. He frowned slightly.

"Yeah."

"Have they been seperated before?"

"Nope."

"...You know there's seven here, right?"

"Yeah."

Sonic looked at the kit with an unreadable expression, pulling the corner of his mouth down. "Does Shadow know he took one of them with him?"

Tails shook his head. "Nope."

xox

 _this is a bit of a mix of two chapters that didn't seem to want to be two seperate chapters_


	6. Three Days

The problem at the base wasn't something Shadow was used to, or at least expecting. When he showed up, Rouge was the first to grab his wrist and sprint off to the safe where they kept their own two Chaos Emeralds. Nothing seemed wrong at forst, but everyone around him was utterly stressed and panicked, something that rarely happened in GUN. The usual soldiers were packed to the teeth with weaponry and ammo, looking way too over-prepared.

"What's wrong?" he hissed, looking up at the closed, undamaged and gaurded safe.

" _That_." Rouge only stressed, and with a wave of her hand, the guards opened the safe and left them pass through.

It was standard as they always had it, files full of cryptid information, useless to everyone but _looked_ important on first glance, and _could_ mean something if one spent too much time reading into them, stacked in messy piles and littering the floor. There were also random papers Shadow personally typed that actually did have important information on them, but they weren't touched. Neither were the fake emeralds they hid on top of the real ones.

That was where he paused, pulling his wrist from the bat's hold and going up the fake emeralds. They weren't touched. That was the first thing anyone went to, and even if they found out they were fake, they would eother break them or put them back in the wrong place or tilted wrong in some way. Shadow pulled them out the case and dug his claws under the case itself, pulling up and breaking the bottom off, the only way to get to the real emeralds.

They weren't there. Breaking the case was the _only_ way to get to the real emeralds.

"Now do you see why we're freaking out?" Rouge sighed, going up behind him and looking into the case. Shadow's mind was churning, trying to figure out so many things.

The vault was easy. If you knew the combination, that was fine. It was difficult, non-repeating, and fairly long, but that was easy enough to get into without having the break.

"Was the safe locked or open when you found it? And clues? Fingerprints?"

"It was locked. Not a thing. Nada. It wasn't even wiped clean, it was like someone teleported in, and the only people we know that can do that is you, and Sonic and Knuckles to some extent." Rouge pulled the case more until it snapped all the way off, showing how none of it was touched, not even the papers.

"But I can't. The field prevents eveyone from teleporting directly in."

The Hive mind in Shadow's quills reacted, sensing something close to Shadow he didn't like. Something that just screamed 'Evil,' and seemed like it was in the same room as them. Other than Shadow and the bat, there was someone else. He pulled onto Shadow's shoulder and gurgled to him to be wary.

Shadow flinched but did so, not questioning why he was even there. No why he was suddenly not wearing a diaper, as he wwa sure all of them were before he left. Rouge, however, yelped in surprise and shock and backed up a few steps.

The hive mind began to talk to him again, in a broken alien tongue neither one of them knew too well, but Shadow understood clearly. "If someone could teleport in, they would have to have a chaos emerald, which I don't sense."

Shadow narrowed his eyes, quills raising in defence. "Unless they _didn't_ , and simply rose from the floor. In which, they wouldn't be able to do the same coming out, and teleporting is out of the equation."

Rouge looked at him and the toddler ballancing on his shoulder, both of them now staring directly in what looked like a empty corner with a random pile of paper. "What are you--?"

"What I'm saying is, I think you should show yourself, _Mephiles._ "

Xx

" _SONIC_!"

"I'M COMING BRO ONE OF THEM HAS MY _EYE_!" Sonic screamed bloody murder when a hive mind grabbed onto his face, pulling down even harder on his eyelid than he thought was possible. He knew for a fact he was probably gonna be deaf after the amount of screaming he had to deal with.

Sonic pushed himself to his hands and knees and took a mad dash for the kitchen, grabbing the nearest pot lid and using it as a shield. "WHERE ARE YOU, BUDDY?"

"IN THE BATHROOM _THEY'RE BREAKING **DOWN THE DOOR**_." Tails' voice dropped a few octaves Sonic never thought his brother could reach, but after smacking one of the devilish demons over the head with the lid, he ran upstairs to find that they were indeed tearing down the door.

It was barely holding on by one of the three hidges, and from the akewed angle, Sonic could see Tails wielding the showerhead as a weapon.

He roared a war cry and charged, picking up the squirming, tail-jabbing, bitting, slashing Hive minds and fighting his way through their jumping attacks to hurriedly open and slam the door closed. He immediately felt a bit bad, as he slammed the door on the tail of one of the kids and it cried out in pure agony, but Sonic shook it off as the tail pulled away and he braced himself against the door.

"We don't have Shadow _or_ your damn brother!"he screamed at the door, but was met with gurgles and clicks. "And we can't understand you either!"

"I don't know why they suddenly snapped on us!" Tails cried, and Sonic finally got to see him. Almost all the fur on his right tail was yanked out, his ear had a clear puncture mark, and there were bite and claw marks littering both of their bodies.

"I guess they've never been separated and don't know how to act." the blue hedgehog pushed back when a partically strong shove nearly knocked him off the door. "But they really should learn how to calm down amd realize we're not the enemy!" The last line was mostly directed to the army of seven children behind them, but Tails understood.

The door was suddenly snapped in half and Sonic was sent tumbling forward, crashing into Tails' lap as the last bit of their protexting crumbled into wood chips. At the sight of once-green eyes now blazed red, seven sharp, deadly tails high in the air, and about a dozen even sharper claws poised and ready for striking, Tails raised his only weapon and held down the trigger.

Immediately, the Hive minds wilted, pulling back from the watery attack and trying to block the oncoming droplets with their hands. It didn't work in the slightest, and when Tails heard them sputtering, he finally pulled his finger away and looked at the damage. All of them were now sitting in a large puddle, all of them soaked in freezing cold water, as Tails had no time to let the water warm up, and looking around.

Then, they began to wail.

Xx

Shadow continued to lay still, hand going to clutch his injured side, but stopping just short as he heaved in effort.

"Battling has been fun, dear brother, but seems you've lost your touch caring for..." Mephiles pushed both emeralds to one hand and picked up the limp Hive mind by the tail, as if it was a gross lump of trash. "Children."

Mephiles floated just a few feet in the air, easy enough to reah, if Shadow could just _stand up_.

It was a struggle, but Shadow got back to his feet, a passion burning in his chest. Mephiles moved to hover a few feet higher, still.

"Oh, that got some spark. Tell me, if I, of, I don't know," He suddenly flipped the creature so he now held its neck in a tight grip, hearing it weakly choke and gasp for air. "Squeeze--"

He didn't get to finish, as the agent went ballistic in that instant, jumping up and spinning in mid-air. His shoe met Mephiles' chest with a resounding _crack_ and he himself slammed into the ground, creating a small crater. Shadow fell and grabbed the Hive mind first, able to snatch an emerald before Mephiles righted himself. The dark creature grabbed the gem and retreated, fleeing to the closest wall and smashing through it.

Shadow panted with effort and kneeled, setting the child down and the emerald roght next to it.

"Shad--" Rouge coughed, crawling over to him from where she was slammed into a wall and almost buried in rubble. Shadow had fished her out, but had to leave her there as that was surprisingly the safest spot at the moment. Shadow looked at her.

"You're still injured, rest." He told, but Rouge glared harshly.

"Just some bruised ribs, you're the one gushing blood everywhere!" That small shout sent her into a coughing fit, and Shadow looked down, where his side was caked in his drying blood. There was a large gash there from Mephiles making use of a steel beam sticking out a destroyed upper floor, but at the moment, he had somewhat forgotten about it in favour of the Hive Mind.

It didn't last very long in the fight. It mostly stuck along the sides, barking out warnings to let Shadow know where he sunk into the ground. It helped much more than he cared to admit, but once Mephiles found out what it was doing, a well placed squeeze drained all the chaos energy out of it, and he left it fall lifelwssly to the ground, just before he tried to cave Shadow's ribs in with a beam.

Before, everyone was in, guns blazing, but when they realized that the bullets just phazed right through him, they were put in a tough situation and were forced to run cor cover. Some didn't make it, and were passed out on the ground, a few even bleeding, but nothing fatal.

The Hive mind stirred and blinked, looking around in mild confusion. It suddenly sat up, still clutching the emerald, and went straight to Shadow's injured side and raised its tail. The agent was about to stop it, but it swiped the air a few times around the cut, and suddenly it was stitched up.

"Oh my god?" Rouge gasped, picking up the toddler and hugging it. It was much too tired to fight her, and didn't see her as much of a threat anyway. "Thanks, Champ!"

"Champ?" Shadow chuckled lowly, minding the 'stitching' the other did. His wound was closed with invisible threads of chaos energy, which somewhat hurt, but it mostly numbed whatever pain he was feeling earlier because that was surely gone now. He felt like taking a nap.

"Sure! We gotta--" She coughed a few times, but lighter, now, "We gotta call him something, right?" Rouge smiled at the both of them and scratched the top of Champ's head, making him purr in content.

Slowly, Shadow gave his own weak smile, accessing the damage he knew he would have to clean up. "Champ it is, then."

"...Don't think I'm gonna help you clean up."

"Rude."

xox

 _FUCK I CHANGED THIS CHAPTER LIKE EIGHT TIMES i procrastinated on it so much augh_

 _but i do like how it turned out. this is also kinda raw, i'll post now and edit in the morning._


	7. Collections

As soon as Shadow opened the front door, he was yanked in and nearly thrown onto the couch.

"THEY WON'T STOP CRYING!" Was then screamed into his ear, and, by the sheer fact that he was exhausted and unable to fight at the moment, Sonic and Tails could call themselves lucky.

A giant bundle of towels and squirming lumps was tossed onto his lap and he cringed at how cold it was. "Down, Champ." He whispered, and it followed to pull at the corner of the towel.

Out spilled the other seven Hive minds, all still damp, with no diapers mind you, and sobbing. He could see them shaking, and their tails were limp while their ears were frozen in place.

"What did you-- they're freezing." Shadow ripped off the soaked towels and sent Champ upstairs for the blanket, hugging the toddlers to his chest. "What. happened."

"W-we-- we tried--" Tails started, only to be cut off.

"Those demons tried to kill us! Look how many scars we got! They kept freaking out and screaming at us so Tails sprayed them with water and they started crying!" Sonic huffed, and Champ came back down, struggling to pull the blanket with him, but ultimately getting it to Shadow.

He didn't say anything at first, just combing his fingers through their fur as they huddled close to any part of him they could grab. The blanket was pulled tightly around them all, anyway, and Champ joined in to provice any heat that he could. Then, Shadow lifted Steve's head, a blank stare masking his face.

"Doesn't look like that's all you did." There was a split in the skin, enough that it bled green blood and was tender to the touch.

"T-that wasn't me!" Tails went over to inspect the damage himself, only for them all the shrink away from him and claw closer to Shadow.

That didn't help his case, as the agent glared daggers at the brothers. He grew deathly silent, and so did the room. Other than the shaking whimpers of the slowly warming Hive minds, no one spoke. Sonic looked at his feet and stepped back a few paces, turning to get the heater stored in their closet.

It was upstairs, hidden under boxes and random sheets haphazardly thrown in and not at all stacked in any way. Sonic sat and started digging through the pile.

"I didn't mean to," he told himself, lifting an old sheet and looking it over "I didn't mean to swing that hard, I was just... scared."

The sheet was tossed aside, along with a half-destroyed pillow. Sonic grabbed the corner of the heavy box and went to pull it, but an odd sounding gurgle made him freeze and look over his shoulder.

A hive mind, the one he remembered Shadow calling Champ, was standing a few feet away with a deadly snarl plastered on his muzzle, eyes narrowed and a deep growl tumbling from his chest. His claws were raised high along with his tail, both tensed and ready to strike.

"Hey. Are you gonna hit me? I deserve it. I shouldn't have hurt one of you anyway." Sonic lowered his ears in defeat, waiting for Champ to do something.

But, he didn't. It took a few seconds for any reaction to show, but instead of attacking, his ears twitched back and forth and he fought down the growl in his chest. The sneer disappeared into a neutral frown, and he lowered himself into a sit.

Sonic unearthed the nearly ancient heater and turned to fully face Champ. "Are you... forgiving me?"

The hive mind only nodded and burst into a sprint downstairs, Sonic quickly following with the heater still in hand.

"Don't believe anything he says!" he chanted, nearly tripping over his own feet once he got to the livingroom "He's lying!"

Of course, no one had said anything yet. Other than Tails now caring for the scar on Steve's head, no one had really moved, either.

"You must be guilty if you're outting yourself when no one has spoken." Shadow shrugged one arm, then looked to the space heater "But, that is appreciated."

Sonic and Champ locked eyes, but neither dare say anything. Sonic set up and plugged in the space heater, and the hive minds hurried to huddle close to it. Within seconds, Shadow began to explain what he had been told while Sonic was gone. That the hive minds were panicked because Shadow was suddenly not there, along with another hive mind, when they knew he was going somewhere dangerous. Then, they got angry that they couldn't be understood and attacked out of frustration, but due to Sonic and Tails fighting back, their natural instinct to protect themselves kicked in. So, the more the brothers faught them, the more the hive minds faught back.

Tails shrugged a shoulder once Shadow finished, "And they already hate being cold, so when I sprayed them with cold water, they started crying because they wanted _Shadow_ to warm them up, not us. Doesn't help that they're sleepy and cranky now." He set down Steve once the bandage was fully on and he raced to the heater, nearly wrapping himself around it.

"That still doesn't explain where all the diapers went."

There was a pregnant pause, Shadow staring straight ahead while Sonic and Tails looked at each other, then to the bare Hive minds.

"Oh my god, they had on diapers."

Thus commenced the easter egg hunt where the reward was not chocolate, but most likely a full and discarded diaper that would ruin the house if left unfound.

Tails flew down to the lab first, hovering above each machine, as those pecky critters could get into anything, and peeking behind them. After that was successfully useless and found him nothing, not like he was sad that there wasn't a soiled diaper behind any of expensive machines, Tails rushed to the few places the toddlers knew best: the table and bench they were created on, and the tank they sat in overnight to grow.

The table was clean, but the tank... He had no clue how the small white diaper, luckily closed up tightly, managed to get in there at first. But, after closer examination, he saw tiny punctures going up the glass.

"They _climbed_ it?" He nearly cried, flying up into the tank and slowly floating down, pinching the fabric with his thumb and forefinger before launching himself out the tank and to the nearest garbage can.

After Tails came back having only found one diaper, he saw Shadow holding two in one hand and setting the couch down with the other.

"Isn't that couch like, an inch above the floor?" Tails asked aloud, and as Shadow discarded the bundles, he shrugged.

"It is, but I wouldn't underestimate them if I were you." He sent a somewhat knowing look to Champ, though the child was fast asleep and, at the moment, couldn't care less about whatever he said.

"Well, one of them threw a baby bomb into my six foot tall holding tank, so I don't think I _can_ underestimate them." Tails bent down to the pile of them, where one sleeplily opened its eyes to look at him. "Though they're cute, they're little _demons_ , Shadow. Kinda like you!"

The fox kit stood and left before Shadow could retort, buzzing his way upstairs to help Sonic and leaving Shadow to search the kitchen.

It wasn't as hard as he thought it would be to find the diapers, as he simply had to tell the children to retrieve them for him and then promptly throw out whatever they found. He also had a leg up on Sonic and Tails, too. He knew the diapers weren't used, but just balled up and discarded because they hated how they felt. So while the brothers tip-toed around the bundled peices of fabric, he boldly grabbed and tossed them.

"Tell me again, if they aren't used, then where do you dispose of your waste?" He brought his head out the cabinet to turn to the eight bouncing toddlers, all busy chattering to themselves about nothing in particular.

One answered him with a shrug, since most of the words he wanted to use wasn't in their dictionary, and ended up pointing out the window. After Shadow tossed out the last bundle, he grabbed whatever snack he saw and made for the window as well to look out. There was some sort of garden, but it was mostly a flat, empty plot with weathered popsicle sticks that used to have pictures of vegetables or herbs on them, but were now bare.

It took him a second to understand, but once he did, his eyes widened a fraction and he stepped back. "I won't say anything," he shrugged "But, I swear to chaos, if _anything_ grows in that garden do _not_ eat it."

Just as he finished, the brothers came downstairs empty handed and satisfied yet somewhat disgusted.

"What were you looking at?" Tails mumbled, while Sonic crouched to poke Champ in the chest.

"Nothing."

xox

 _why did it take me three days to write this_


	8. Sleep

_Shout out to all the people that actually like this weird idea of mine_

 _xox_

"What do you _mean_ you're going home!?" Sonic nearly screeched, quite literally throughing himself to Shadow's feet. "You're the _ONLY_ one that can take care of these little tikes!"

Shadow stared down at Sonic in a mix of pitty and disgust, pulling on leg out of Sonic's hold and then the other. "I mean exactly what I said. I have a house and plan to use it for its purpose of living in it. Now if you'll excuse me--"

As soon as he looked at the door, he stared on in disappointment. Tails had somehow pinned himself up in front of the door, a full two feet off the ground, grinning sheepishly and sweating with effort. Wothin seconds, though, his grip started to fade and his arms shook.

"Even if you block the door, you do realize I can chaos control directly into my house, right?" Shadow was vaguely aware of Sonic grabbing his ankle again and kicked it off, slightly pleased with the hiss of pain from the hedgehog below him.

"But you can't leave! They hate us and always freak out when you leave!" Tails pleaded, by now giving up and falling to his feet. He still tried to block the door, though.

They all looked to the Hive minds in question. All eight were sitting on the floor, doing nothing much in particular. Other than trying to stick the limb of another or one of the many random things they found strewn across the house in their mouth, they seemed like the calmest lot of children around. Until on had it's tail bit down on and turned from calm to evil within a second, hissing and slashing at the air in front of the one that bit its tail. The biter cowered and started to cry just as Shadow walked over to them and separated them.

"How about this," He spoke over his shoulder, at the brothers, then turned back to the Hive minds. "Don't bother Tails or Sonic, don't bite each other, don't cause a fight, and go to sleep as soon as I leave." He stood and dusted his hands, smirking to the two behind him.

"There." Then, as an afterthought "But if you _do_ need something, they can't understand what you're saying and fighting them just makes them scared, so _show_ them."

Shadow said nothing else and went to the door, casually pushing Tails out the way as if he weighed nothing at all, then left.

All was quiet.

For about ten seconds, before the fight between the bittee and bitter started up again. Sonic rushed over to the one crying and Tails picked up the one squirming and hissing.

"Come on, they didn't mean to bite you! Or that hard, if they did mean to..." Tails trailed off, turning the child to try and see its tail tip. Seening the damage made him cringe, and he cursed the children for having nearly razor sharp needle teeth to begin with.

"Don't cry, little guy! Dude over there's just angry, he doesn't mean whatever he's saying in that weird language of yours!" Sonic cooed, and, surprisingly, it worked. While the other was still pissed and in pain about its tail, the one Sonic held calmed down enough to stop thrashing.

After a bit of calming words and rocking, Sonic and Tails noticed that the others were starting to get worked up because the two weren't calming down.

"Ice cream! Everything's better with ice cream!" Sonic announced, rushing into the kitchen. "They can eat ice cream, right? It's just frozen milk, right?"

Tails looked on, but could only offer a shrug "I guess?" the kids all looked confused, though. "Will you all calm down if we give you ice cream?"

That seemed promising, so, everyone agreed (even the angry one, who begrudgingly nodded just so he could be put down). Tails ushered them in and set each child on the tabtable, geting each on a paper bowl because, from the way they treated the bottles, the bowls probably wouldn't live to see another day. Confusion was evident on their faces when the fox kit pulled out a spoon, but he knew if they got messy and the two had to wash them they would get their ears chewed off my Shadow. and maybe quite literally if he was angry enough.

The table wasn't big enough to hold eight children, and the chairs were way too low to hold them. The wood was also not the warmest, as they wiggled around when he set them down before relaxing when the wood warmed to their body heat. But, after a bit of work, they all looked up to both of them, gently swaying back and forth in content. as Tails handed out spoons.

"Just a scoop, though. They're half alien lab experiments, but they still got hedgehog in them." Tails warned, just as the last kid was armed with a spoon that he quickly tried to use as a weapon and jab the fox in the hip with it. But, since it was plastic, it did nothing.

"Yeah yeah bud, I've been doing the one scoop all my life now and it's frustrating." Sonic snickered, pulling up to each bowl and dropping a spherical glob of vanilla ice cream in.

In an instant, spoons were forgotten and either thrown across the room or stabbed into the ice cream just so the Hive minds could reach in for a cold handful. Half reacted just about how they expected, recoiling because of the cold, but the other half shoved the handful into their mouths anyway. The few that tasted theirs went at like animals, handful after cold handful until the scoop was gone. Sonic had to help the rest by giving them a rundown on how spoons work, which only lasted for two uses before they were bitten off or thrown to use the fist method.

"At least they're calm now." Tails sighed, petting the one closet to him. "You gotta admit, they're cute little monsters aren't they?"

"I mean, they are, but then you remember the claws and teeth and tail and that cuteness goes right down the drain." Sonic snickered, now holding the pint and eaching straight from it with a spoon. Tails almost complained, then took a spoon and shared it, too.

"Are you saying that as a cute little baby you were spiney and pointy and dangerous? You could almost break the sound barrier and had quills sharp enough to cut through wood with barely any effort."

"Yeah but I--..." He pointed his spoon, trying to think of something to say, but drew a blank. "...You got me there."

They shared a short laugh, then looked at the table and collectivly noticed they were two babies short.

"Oh great--" A gurgle cut Tails off and he looked up, seeing the child on the fridge and looking down at him. "Young man! Get down here right now!"

Sonic _was_ going to prevent the rest from leaving, but that was utterly futile as they all bounced away to hide and peek at them.

And, with Tails's grim realization from a packet of instant oatmeal pelting the side of his face, throw things at them.

Seconds quickly turned to minutes before the two realized they had a problem, and then sprung up another problem of needing to call Shadow for help.

"It's _1:22_ AM I _know_ Shadow's gonna be pissed," Sonic whined, sliding the phone to the kit across the table, which was slowly becoming less of a table and more of a surface for the bouncing balls of hyperistic adrenalin to ricochet off of. " _You_ call him, he actually likes you."

"Shadow likes you! He's also gonna--" He stopped when he noticed the blinking orange light, showing that Shadow's phone was ringing. He snatched the phone up to his ear and waited anxiously through each ring.

At the last one, Shadow answered. "What the fuck?"

That was honestly justified, so Tails didn't fret about it too much. "These guys are bouncing off the walls and _we can't get them to stop_ please help us??" He mumbled into the phone, just enough that Shadow barely understood what he said.

There was shifting before Shadow voice got even more muffled for a second. He was probably talking into a cover or pillow. "Did you feed them or anything?"

"Just a scoop of ice cream! The two that was fighting because of the bite only calmed down when Sonic offered them ice cream. But it was just a scoop! And it was vanilla, too!" The kit looked up, ears lowering when Sonic was nearly pinned to the ground but stomping children.

"Hey, take the pint of ice cream and do me a favour of reading the ingredients." Shadow slurred, but Tails grabbed the now empty pint and lifted it to his face.

Seconds of reading passed, then; "Oh. Sugar."

"Mmh-hmm." Shadow hung up.

That simple click was all Tails needed to know they were going to be in hell for the next few hours.

xox

 _gods this is short it's literally 2:37 am and I have a ton of shit to do in the morning i really just need to get this posted im sorry mates_


	9. Hide and Sleep

_goodness me, I'm so sorry. this is almost **two weeks** late._

xox

Through the many attempts of gathering the children into one room, only three were successful in some way. The first time they were locked into the bedroom, Champ found a vent and all of them escaped. The second attempt was led by Steve, who hid everyone under the bed and made them stay quiet, so when the brothers opened the door to check on them, they bolted out and were free. The last attempt, Tails locked himself in with the kids.

The first thing he did was lock the vent and sit down heavily on the bed, forcing out whoever was trying the bed trick again. It didn't help that Champ kept looking around, and Tails just _knew_ he was planning something.

None of the Hive minds even _sat down_. Always bouncing, charging each other, jumping on the bed, clawing up the blinds and ruining them beyond repair, or just flat out tugging whatever was deemed tug-able. That list included and mainly consisted of any limb belonging to the fox, where the main event was yanking his two flicking tails. What didn't help was attempting to fly to keep them away, as they would get excited about it and try to launch themselves towards him. Tails also couldn't keep himself up for that long, either, and ultimately fell to his toddler centered doom.

"Just _go_ to _sleep_ ," the fox begged, sitting up to begrudgingly push off whoever decided his lap was now a good place to sit and test their claws. None of them listened, and, being way too tired to fight them anymore, Tails groaned and flopped onto his back to get whatever sleep he could. Though, oddly enough, a few minutes after he closed his eyes the room began to quiet until not a single sound was heard.

The silence was welcome, and Tails turned onto his side, a small, pleased smile gracing his muzzle as he finally got to sleep.

When he deemed it safe, Sonic cracked open the door just to close it behind him right away. Only Tails inhabited the bed, so the hedgehog figured they were probably hiding under again.

"Come on out~" Sonic quietly sang, lifting the bed's skirting to peek under. Other than dust bunnies, nothing stood out to him. with a grumble of confusion, he turned to the vent instead.

It was high up and to the closest right corner of the room, next to the door by a couple of feet and right under a mostly empty wardrobe. The wardrobe itself had already been through some things and wasn't in the best shape to begin with; one of the doors was barely hanging on and wood barely resembled mahogany anymore. The side was littered with scratches and pock marks from their first attempt, but no new ones were there. Just to make sure, though, Sonic climbed up and yanked at the vent to see if it stayed on. It did.

"Come on, kids. How did you escape this--?" Sonic looked around before cutting himself off with a grim thought, eyes settling on the one window they had in the room. It was partially open and ruined blinds gently swayed in the quiet wind.

In a flash, Sonic was over to the window and opening it all the way, sticking his head out the torn up screen and looking down.

There they were, huddled in a small group and seemingly crashing from their sugar high. They were either chattering to each other or shivering, but he was too far to tell which.

Sonic leaped. "Hey!" He shouted, and just at he landed, one of them yelled and all eight scattered like bugs under harsh light, deep into the woods. The blue speed demon was fast enough to catch one, but it quickly thrashed and tried to claw at him so much it managed to wiggle out his hands and escape.

Looking around, lost of what to do, he sighed and sat down onto the cold grass. Sonic had to face the music and hope he could catch the rhythm.

Upon the last ring, there was a gruff "What the hell?" on the other line. Somehow, Sonic was expecting that.

"So, you know how kids and sugar don't mix? Yeah, so I found out that all of the hive minds escaped out the second floor window and might have hurt themselves and are cold and kinda scattered throughout the woods behind Tails' house and they scattered so I pretty much have no clue where they are."

It was a mouthful. Looking up to the sky, Sonic stared at the crescent moon and many stars whilst waiting for Shadow's response. But, instead of a lovely hiss and belittling of Shadow directly into his ear, he got the not at all pleasant surprise of the Real Life Shadow directly in his _face_.

The grumpy ebony hedgehog grabbed Sonic by his neck and lifted, not holding enough pressure to strangle him, but enough to cut off the amount of blood rushing to his brain and pin him to the side of the house.

" _You **what?**_ "

Sonic noticed, while slowly going delusional, that Shadow looked pretty good under moonlight. Besides his bloodshot eyes, but that was probably due to not getting enough sleep. Oh yeah, that and probably because he was pissed to all hell at the moment while Sonic gawked like a silly schoolgirl.

A quick slam to the wall again made him snap out of it.

"I-I didn't do it-- Why don't you _help_ me instead of _hurt_ me because I-- I can't _breathe, Shadow!"_ Sonic huffed, noticing Shadow's hold getting tighter with every word.

Finally, the agent let him go and he fell limp, hitting the ground in a heap and wheezing heavily. "Thanks, jerk."

"Do you think this is the time to be toying with me?"

"Obviously not," Sonic shrugged one shoulder as he stood, then sent a half-hearted glare at the cranky hedgehog next to him. "But I don't care. As far as I know, _you_ and _Tails_ created those brats, okay? Tails fell asleep and you left. That doesn't mean blame me or Tails, it means stop being cranky for once and own up when something bad happens and _fix it._ "

The blue speed demon took off in a low jog after that, not wanting to hear whatever Shadow possibly had to say after that and just wanting for the night to end. The entire day he was in a mood because he woke up and made breakfast no one ate, because Tails rushed off right away and Shadow was sleep, then went to the shower to find _all_ the towels still in the dryer and way too wet to use. He had to half-shake half blowdry himself, then took the first gloves he saw from the spare room Shadow decided to sleep in, only to get attacked by seven children out for blood.

The worst part was that Shadow barely handled anything that day! He left with a Hive mind, making the rest freak out so badly they kept attacking them and even caused Sonic to hurt one in the process. Then he just up and leaves again after their disgusting Easter egg hunt involving dirty diapers, where they struggled to make the kids calm down so much they resported to Ice cream.

Sure, it wasn't really his or Tails fault; They weren't up for too much blame. Well, Sonic was the one who suggested ice cream, so he should have been the one to know that it had sugar in it, but really sometimes it was everyone that was at fault.

One think that was not helping his search was that it was dark. The moon was far too thin to really provide much of any light and because Sonic jumped out the window without any semblance of a plan, he was without a flashlight, too. The trees were crowded s o close together, casting deep shadows against and over esch other. All the trees also somewhat connected in some way or another, most leading pathes and vines across one another that someone could hide confidently. It was also unfortunate that it had rained within the week, leaving the ground still a bit damp in places snd made his footing skid.

The faint sound of a branch cracking caught his attention, making him stop mid-step and turn towards it. The stop made him slide across the grass slightly, but he slowed, looking up into the canopy of trees. Waiting. Seconds passed, and the attention span of a child passed as eell and the creaking sound came again, but this time a bit behind him and further down the path he ran. Sonic backtracked some, staring up into the tree before he saw someone huddled to a branch like their life depended on it.

The hive mind was a good ten feet up, and the claw marks on the tree was an indication on how it got up there. With a jump and a short climb, Sonic landed a few thick branches away.

"Hey there," he started, and it llifted its head with a shy, pleading look, but upon seeing him it scrunched up its face and hissed. "Well, good morning to you, too."

Since it was far too afraid to fight in fear of letting go of the branch, Sonic grabbed it by the scruff and marched back home. The path he made was just a beeline, but it was still hard to follow it back.

Inside, Tauls was napping, as expected, so Sonic ran about the house to lock and board up everything they could possibly eat or used to get back outside the house. He dumped them on the couch, turned, and sprinted back outside.

The hivemind was soon joined by another, who looked pissed beyond belief. Both looked up to see Shadow staring down at them. He didn't say anything and left to gather more of the escaped children.

xox

 _late and short, aint that terrible._

 _sorry, I would continue, but I'm sleepy now and my mind is making me type whatever, even if it doesn't make sense._

 _i love u_


	10. Escape!

Gathering the Hiveminds took up a ton of their time and strength combined; Shadow having to climb more trees than he liked and Sonic crawling through enough bushes to consider dropping the 'hog' from his name.

It didn't help that the later it grew into the night, the more tired and cranky the hedgehogs got and the more they ended up frightening off the poor toddlers. Sonic's eyes were half-mast and bloodshot, similar to his dark counterpart, but ad he was notmally know to have a smile stitched onto his face it was unnerving to see him frowning for so long. Shadow wasn't any better; slightly hunched with now an entirely passive look instead of his usual scowl of smirk. They were both deathly _exhausted_ , to the point where even the ultimate lifeform himself was too tired to call the rest of the children to him.

The weather shifted as well, going from the brisk nightly air to a stale wind. Not enough to be too disturbing, but with how the children reacted just by getting doused with cold water, they were going to be freaking out even more. Every member retrieved meant picking up a child determined to suck away every inch of warmth you gathered, turning around, and somehow managing to find your way back home and supressing the urge to toss them onto the nearest surface. With the ground still being soggy and the night getting ever darker, the two hedgehogs teamed up to look for the remaining three.

Eventually, the Hive started to help each other hide during the dwindling numbers, as Sonic and Shadow found out after combing the entire wooded area, where the last three were huddled together in the cove of a dead tree. All three were shivering madly and refusing to move other than those involuntary movements. The hedgehogs exchanged a look of pure exhaustion and relief, then reached down. Sonic pried one off the pile and it screamed, but after hearing two other screams for about an hour and a half straight numbed his ears to it. Shadow was right behind him with the last two, who did complain out loud, but didn't scream to such volumes as the one Sonic carried.

They went back to the house without a shared word between them, without making remote eye contact, and not even acknowledging the other for a while. As the door opened and the last of the Hive was sat on the couch, in front of the heater that Sonic hastily set up to keep the rest of them still, Shadow turned on his heel and left.

The blue hedgehlg groaned under his breath and turned to his wall clock, reading that it was nearing three in the morning. Reluctant to do much else that night, he eyed the heater too close to the couch before giving in and dragging it a foot away.

"Alright," He spat, lingering on a blink for far too long. "It's late. Go to sleep. Stay asleep. Don't wake up until it's _time_ to wake up." he addressed the eight children sitting in front of him, all under the large blanket Shadow tossed over them as an afterthought.

Just by looks alone, Sonic _knew_ none of them were paying attention to him. So, he snarled this time. "I mean it." He hissed, then turned and dragged himself up the stairs on all fours. It was animalisted but at the moment Sonic couldn't care in the slightest, then slid into bed and fell asleep.

Hours later, well into the morning beyond the time everyone was supposed to be awake, all the adults (or damn near close to it) were still sleeping soundly.

Which meant, for the eight toddlers, no supervision!

At first it was a fun thought, getting to explore the places they didn't get to see before, crawling through all the vents, and finding new hiding spaces, but it all grew boring after an hour. Most dangerous spaces, like Tails' lab and garage, were locked and certain surfaces unclimbable even to their sharp claws.

Then, the issue of food became a large issue. None of them actually _knew_ where their food came from, and rifling through the cabinets and chewing on whatever smelled edible enough didn't seem like the greatest idea. But, with no other choice, they did so anyway.

All the metal cans seemed like a bust, as simply nibbling them caused way too much pain to their mouths and even clawing at them proved no progress. Steve was able to stab into one with his tail, but it hurt far too much to continue so he flung it against the wall.

They turned to each other and came to a conclusion: They needed care.

And who else was to give them care, other than their master, Shadow?

The main issue with their plan of Getting Shadow was the fact that they didn't know how to get to him nor where he was in the first place. Sure, the blue hedgehog and fox were around, and they were often with Shadow, but their prioritie was Shadow and Shadow only.

So, having exhausted all other options, and not wanting to deal with the two adults in the house, the Hive minds rushed off to the front door in glee. It didn't open, no matter how much they clawed, so they turned to the window. Which, also, didn't open. In a fit, one of them rushed off and squeeled angrily for a while before calling the others over, showing that it had tore the vent panel off the wall from her rage.

At the progression, the toddlers giggled to each other and traversed the small, cramped vents, eventually meeting the earthy, warm scent of outside.

The one from before broke off that cover as well with a swift, strong headbutt, and the cover thudded onto the grassy floor below with the eight children following.

Thus began their search for Shadow!

The agent himself was, not surprisingly, at work. He sat in an office chair, boredly swiveling side to side while looking over the many online and physical files dumped onto him. Since, apparently, he knew a ton about Eggman and even more about Mephiles, he was supposed to be in charge of everything they knew and had about both of them.

After a pretty weird conversation with Chaotix to get Espio, alone, Vector was determined to come along anyway, and since Charmy couldn't be by himself quite yet, the entire team ended up in the same office as him. Espio was luckily enough _attempting_ to help him cross refrence and read through the thick stack, but Charmy took all the online files on the computer and arranged them into a picture on the desktop and Vector took a laptop for himsslf to play online poker on.

"Got something, finally." Espio spoke up after the near twenty minutes of blabbering, sorting, and cheers from the betting croc, and Shadow might have cried right then and there.

"What?" He croaked, and the chameleon flinched at his voice. He didn't ask over the phone, but the clear 'I hate everything' look Shadow had, stronger than usual, was enough to deter him from asking.

"I have something; Why Mephiles and Eggman could possibly be working together. Apparently, Mephiles wants something, but Eggman is the only person who knows how to get it. What, I don't know, but that's all I can get from his diary." He tilted his head, turning the stack of papers slightly to show the tired hedgehog.

"Why am I not surprised he has a diary?" Shadow asked quietly, then "Can you find what he wants? It has something to do with the chaos emeralds, and thats all I know."

"Oh, _those!?_ I found one just the other day!" Charmy cut in, buzzing over to Shadow while Vectoe loudly complained that he won it and that the bee didn't just _find_ it.

He was ignored, and, the bee pulled his hands from behind his back and dropped the shiney white emerald into his open hands.

He and Espio stared at it dumbly. "And you just... carried it with you the entire day, and didn't bother to say anything?"

"I forgot!" He beamed, then raced back over to the abandoned computer to shut it and sit on the closed system anyway, as it was now warm from use.

"It's easier to not question," Espio sighed, handing the papers to Shadow for them to trade.

However, as soon as the agent opened his mouth to retort, he shut it right after when the emerald began to glow lightly unto the paper. From the glow, a few letters began to change colour and stand out. It was faint in the bright, blinding light of the cramped space, but chucking an empty waterbottle at Vector and shouting at him to turn off the lights easily did the trick.

It was difficult to read at first, but then it grew easier and they stared at everything in a mix if shock.

What was constantly repeated was that they only had two more days to react.

xox

 _Haply late halloween i got no candy and actually went to the fucking doctor in 4c weather so goddamn it love you_

 _also mistakes cant be corrected for some reason, sorry_


	11. Alarms Never Work

The Search For Shadow seemed to be going in circles from the toddlers' standpoint. Someone found a lock of Shadow's fur, having been torn off from a jagged edge of a tree while he and Sonic were out searching for them, and they were able to track his scent for a little while before meeting the sudden, painful smell of dry cement and every smell in the world caked into it. After taking up traveling the sidewalk in a pack, and earning many stares and many other mobians and humans screaming at them in fear and/or trying to attack them, they hid in the nearest dark place they could find to figure some things out.

A few things were wrong. Number one, everyone they passed walked on two legs, not all four. Two, their eyes were similar to Sonic, Tails, and Shadow, and not a shade of green with a lighter portion serving as their iris. and three, all of them could speak English, or at least a version of it. So, in order to get going and ask if anyone knew who Shadow was, they had to correct all three of those problems.

The first was pretty difficult to master, but eventually they got it down. Each padded the dirty, empty, dark alley with bare paws in pride before Champ warned them about glass and metal and how much those things could hurt if stepped on or thrown at you. So, they became a bit more cautious. Though they walked with their arms up at their sides, ready to drop back down at a moments notice back onto all fours, that was the first thing done and tackled.

The second seemed impossible at first, before one of the female Hive minds showed that she already learned how to do it a while back and started teaching the others. It took way longer for that part to happen, but, after nearly twenty to thirty minutes, they all had a normal set of eyes with green irises. Shadow was gonna be so proud of them!

The last bit was Steve's work, where he held up a black rock and struck it down against the brick of the building containing the alley and left a smudgy smear. Then, he drew a crude version of a black hedgehog on it, very small and very messy, but he got the message across. The rest asked him how he obtained such a magical stone before he went over to a brown, almost paper bag with a name they couldn't read. The bag was ripped open and contained the black lumps that smelled of fire or burning wood.

Armed with their magical black drawing lumps, they set off on the streets again and faced the many mobians and humans, who all... still... continued to give them odd looks.

Who just let eight children wander the streets alone? And why did they keep drawing all over the sidewalk with charcoal?

A blaring noise followed by a yelp of glee made Shadow spring up from his desk, a lone sheet of paper slowly peeling off his cheek as he turned to stare at Vector.

"Huh?" The croc mumbled, looking up just to meet Shadow's death glare and grinned sheepishly. "O-oh, sorry! I just got a case for next Saturday."

Shadow sighed and looked over to Espio, who seemed to have turned into a cat and somehow fell asleep curled into a ball in his rolling chair. Charmy had settled in the little nook next to his stomach, the two of them apparently not bothered by the terrible noise their boss just created.

It made Shadow fear how long they worked with him that his loud noises didn't even phaze them.

"That's... that's enough for today," he grumbled, voice raspy from just waking up, but he didn't bother to clear it. "What time is it...?"

Considering he came to work at 7 on the dot, right on time, and it was now going onto 12:45, he had worked/slept an hour and 45 minutes over his normal work schedule and was in overtime. So, that meant extra pay, which he didn't really need but didn't complain about, someone knew he was in overtime but didn't come to tell him, and that he should probably go visit the Hive Minds and make sure Sonic and Tails didn't die yet.

"Vector," he frowned, blinking exhausted eyes "Wake up Espio and that bee, you all can go."

The croc nodded a bit happily, knowing that the General would pay them considering Shadow had to bring in outside help. General always hated when Shadow did that, but Shadow openly stated that he didn't care anyway.

Shadow watched them wake and leave, then collected all the paper in a pile, took the emerald, shut off the computer, and left his office while locking the door behind him.

He passed Harold on his way out, who was supposed to take over his shift an hour and fifty minutes ago, drinking hot chocolate and eating a granola bar. They shared a stare of rivalry hatred as they passed each other, before their stare was cut off by the wall and Shadow continued on his way.

As he neared the door, he waved goodbye to Rouge, who blinked at him in confusion as she glanced at the clock then simply shrugged it off. He was glad she did. He did _not_ want to explain that he fell asleep for so long.

Teleporting to their house would be cool, but it'd be more draining than simply walking there. And walking seemed nice, anyway. It was a good day out, Shadow noticed. The sky was a wonderful baby blue and the clouds fluffy and drifting. The agent found himself staring upwards for a moment, a small smile gracing his muzzle until he looked ahead once again and started on his way to the brothers' house.

He remembered the first time he looked at the sky. The actual sky, and not Space. He was so shocked to know the sky was blue. It was a shock to feel spring rain for the first time, to feel the brisk chill of autum and the freezing snow of winter and the blazing heat of summer. It was nice.

His thoughts were a bit interrupted by looking down, noticing that he was now walking on a bunch of black scribbles. Looking closely, he could barely recognize that they were supposed to be drawings. Then, facing the street, saw a small crowd of people gathered on the sidewalk that was slowly growing bigger by the minute.

Waking up, finally, Sonic groaned and turned over in bed before yelping as he was suddenly acquainted with the floor. He sat up and looked around his room before finding his alarm, which somehow ended up upside down and under the bed. He took it out and read it as 1:03 PM.

"Man, I know I sleep late, but jeez this is a new record," He chuckled, coughing a few times to clear his throat as he stood.

Sonic made his way to the bathroom first, then after a quick wash up, went downstairs just to look around in confusion. A few things were wrong, like why breakfast wasn't made by now and why none of the Hive minds were asleep on the couch, where he left them.

The kitchen was also slightly torn apart, with boxes and bags and cans tossed everywhere. there was even a can slowly dripping onto the floor that looked like someone stabbed it once with a knife.

Going back into the living room, the front door was scratched heavily at the bottom and a bit at the sides. The wall under the window also had scratches too.

So, the Hive had woken up and went somewhere, Sonic thought to himself.

His first idea was to check the lab, because Tails originally wanted to experiment on them anyway, but found it locked. Pounding on the door proved no results and he didn't hear anything going on in there other than the usual whir of the active machines, so he went back upstairs in case they snuggled with Tails to stay warm

The fox was just now waking up, groggy and squinting with one eye shut because it was a bit too bright. "Hey, Sonic. What time is it?" He smiled faintly, but his brother didn't return it.

"It's like, 110, something like that. Have you seen the Hive minds?" Worry started to rise in his voice, and since he just woke up, Tails only shook his head with a dull stare.

"Nope. Man, did we really sleep that late?" He smiled again, but when Sonic still didn't return it, he frowned. "What's up?"

"The _Hiveminds_ are _gone,_ Tails. I don't see them _anywhere_." he huffed, setting his hands on his hips and tapping his foot.

"What do you mean 'gone?' Didn't you set your alarm?" The kit quickly stood and hurried downstairs, rubbing his eyes clear along the way and barely recovering from his slip down the stairs once again.

The word 'alarm' made him frown. He _did_ set an alarm at 6:30 to feed the hive so Shadow could come over and find them full and sleep, but, since the clock ended up upside down and under the bed, he figured he banged on the 'dismiss' button and knocked it under the bed with the same hit just to go back to sleep.

"I'm not responsible." He admitted, and Tails stared at him before rushing into the TV room. It was only used to play games when Knuckles got the chance to come over, so usually the door to it was cracked closed. This time, it was pushed wide open and the vent near the floor was yanked off and laid against the ground.

"They got outside." The brothers breathed, then shared a look of fear.

Pushing into the crowd and earning a few glares, Shadow growled and announced his presence. Those who turned saw and recognized him as not someone to mess with, immedietly went silent and gave him room. By the time he got to the center of attention, he saw why.

Inside a cardboard box, ripped and torn with a corner of it soaked in an unknown liquid, sat all eight Hive Minds. Half of them were exhausted and laying limp in the box, while a few were swiping at whoever got too close. All their hands were smeared aith black charcoal and their eyes 'normal' but looking around in fear. They all were clicking out his name in pleads while someone, a squirrel, sat on a stack of milkcrates and was announcing something.

There was a sign behind them labeled 'Chao Hybrids: 1 for $5!'

Shadow didn't even attempt to listen to what he was saying and stepped forward. Once he was seen, the Hive minds perked up and went to rush for him but were held back by the squirrel waving a large stick in their faces and knocking them back in.

"Who are you? Care to buy?" He smirked. His bushy tail swung happily, but Shadow's glare deepened.

"They are _not_ yours. They are _not_ Chao. They are _not_ hybrids. They will _not_ be sold and will be coming back home with me." He hissed, and the squirrel was taken aback slightly, but glared right back.

"I don't know what your problem is, pal, but these here hybrids are _mine_ , and I have the right to sell them or not. Got me? No if you're not buying--"

"Steve, slash the box. Champ, come here."

At the command, their eyes returned to their normal green slates and they followed. Steve's tail reduced the box to shreds and everyone was freed. Champ jumped out and climbed Shadow's body like a tree, perching on his shoulder while the rest brought up enough strength to turn to the squirrel and snarl threats he couldn't understand. The crowd began to break up and shrink back, now fearing the 'chao hybrids.'

"Now, will you kindly clean all this up before I have you meet the bad end of my and my kids' temper?" Shadow spoke evenly, and the squirrel quickly nodded.

He tore up the sign and tossed the crates back where he found them, smiling in pure terror the entire time until everything he created on the spot was destroyed. "N-no prob-- no hard feelings, right bud? Buddy? Pal? God I'm so sorr--"

"Shut up. Hive, we're leaving." his mask fell back into a deep glare and the last seven climbed up onto him, finding a place to perch and hold on to that allowed Shadow to walk freely.

What he didn't notice was someone from the remaining crowd narrow his own green eyes before sinking into the floor and fading from view.

Shadow only walked another block, not speaking, then teleported to the living room of the brothers' house. "Get off and on the couch," He started, and they followed silently.

A few offered an appology, claiming they were hungry and tried to find him, but he didn't respond nor acknowledged that he even heard them and continued into the kitchen.

Thus commenced the angriest way anyone could make eight bottles of cool milk as he was not in the mood to warm it up for that long. Shadow walked in, gave each one their bottle, and sat on the chair directly opposite and stared at them.

They sat, staring at their bottles for only about two seconds before lifting them to drink. It was the most stressful meal they ever consumed, and while it was good, none of them dared try to drink any different way they were so used to doing with Shadow staring them down like that.

He was crossing both his arms _and_ legs, and the leg that stayed down was bouncing anyway. He refused to admit the fear that shot through him at the thought that, had he not woken up, he would have lost them all. He also refused to admit how he called them his 'kids' and not 'experiments.'

He also refused to admit that he was crying right now.

xox

 _I got a wonderful review from both Blazepyro and Linz2 and man did it make my day! i always wonder why people like this weird story lol. like, Shadow now has 8 kids. thats the story. why did people like this so much? but man i was so excited I typed this and part of Transformation without even working on Moving On at all lol_

 _(usually I hate typing Hivemind, but I guess theres always exceptions)_

also excuse spelling errors bc apparently i cant ever fix them or realize I did it wrong.


	12. Spooky Scary

Once the tears began to fall, Shadow was quick to rub at his face and force them away just as soon as they formed. It hurt and he rubbed his eyes to the point where they were irritated, but he didn't care. The Hive looked on in concern, calling to him and attempting to calm him down by any means, but he continued to ignore them.

It made the kids a bit upset that they no longer had their charcoal to draw him pictures instead, and had no clue what made him happy in the first place, so they were stuck with calling out to him from a distance. One attempted to crawl down and off the couch long enough to coddle up to him, but Shadow quickly snapped at her to stay put and for none of them to leave the couch.

Soon, the tears dribbled to a stop, and Shadow laid his head on the back of the chair to stare up at the ceiling. It was the same cream colour as the walls. He stared at it, and his ears twitched before folding in the direction of the stairs. Someone was attempting to walk down them while another constant swishing sound followed right behind. He continued to look at the bare, cream ceiling with his pinkened ruby eyes and heaving chest and refused to acknowledge them as they drew closer.

"Shad? Um... we heard you crying... are you okay?" Sonic whispered, barely hiding his flinch from Tails whapping him on the arm. Shadow once yelled at the kit for simply _joking_ he was about to cry, and he feared the worse for his brother.

But, no hit nor shout ever came. It was just Shadow, sitting in the chair, staring up at the ceiling. The only difference was that his hands clutched at his legs just a bit tighter, but other than that, nothing happened. The Hive grew scared and shuffled along the couch, standing up just to sit back down again and wiggling their ways to the very edge but stopping just short of getting off.

"Chao Hybrids, one for five dollars. Eight total. Buy the entire box for just thirty five dollars." Shadow recited, and the hive mind seemingly froze, absolute terror and overwhelming sorrow overcoming them.

Normally, they would find the source of Shadow's emotion and try to make it stop. But, now, the emotions were all over the place. They were confused and muddled with whoever was causing Shadow's state, with the options being Sonic and Tails, The hive themselves, and Shadow.

Tails opened his mouth but a buzzing made him pause, looking at the phone Shadow haf laid on the counter. The agent didn't attempt to get up, so he picked it up and offered it to him. "I-it's from Espio." He whispered.

Shadow took the device and sighed while answering. "Espio."

"Shad-- Shadow, it's all changed, all of it. I kept some-- Took a copy of the files with me because I just _knew_ there was something we weren't seeing and there's _more._ More, or, different? I don't know, I can't remember, I just--" By then, Shadow had sat up with a much different emotion than before.

"Slow down, you're not making any sense. Where are you?" The hive abandoned the 'don't get off the couch' rule and crowed to him in a heartbeat, leaving Sonic and Tails to soot closer in hopes to hear what the other was saying.

"At-- I'm at Vector's damn detective agency, Shadow. Our hideout. I'm _panicked_ because there's descriptions of tiny versions of you, or what seems to be you, and apparently theres a bunch of them and they-- _Just get over here!"_ Espio hung up and Shadow pulled the phone from his ear.

"So...?" Tails whispered, eyeing the hive minds with caution. While today was the day they were going to start testing, Shadow was clearly way too busy to stay and supervize.

"So what? I'm going, and--" the agent stood just to feel whichever hivemind nestled in his lap suddenly dig their claws into his legs for grip. "And... I can't leave them alone. Great." He finished with a deep sigh.

"Well, I think we can try and take care of them?" Sonic asked, but even he knew, as he was talking, that Shadow was already chanting 'no' in his head.

The deep glare of absolute hatered was further backing that up, too.

"I think I'll head over, Shadow. You and Sonic try to find a way to make these guys more... _accepting_ of us and make sure they don't turn as soon as you're out of sight." Tails said, and after a pause where Shadow unlatched the child stuck to his thigh and dismissed the small dots of blood thag formed, he faintly nodded.

"Okay. I don't have much of a choice. I'm giving you and hour, kit." he turned to him and outstretched his hand. "I might as well warn you, Mephiles is involved."

Tails nearly flaked when the name was mentioned but held himself strong and shook the agent's hand, raising it up in a salute when he let go and turning on his heel to march out the door. "You have my word, Shadow!" He called, and was gone.

"What word?"

"I don't know, he didn't promise anything."

Gurgles made the two forget the odd interraction and look down, where the hive was curled at Shadow's feet and purring pretty much gibberish. Knowing what they wanted, and knowing what the actually needed at the time, Shadow took one of the chaos emeralds from his quills and showed it to them.

"Look. You all need this for power, understand?" He spoke, and it was as if he was speaking to squirrels because all they did was stare at the 'shiney'.

"I don't think they get it..." Sonic spoke up before finding himself suddenly holding an emerald, too. "W-where'd you get a second one?"

"Long story," He picked up Champ, who seemed to not have _much_ of a problem with Sonic, and gave him to the blue hedgehog. "If you get one to trust you, the rest will follow."

Champ squirmed in his hols but didn't complain, which drew the attention of the others. They watched him with wary eyes as Sonic gave the child the emerald and waited for any sign to attack. Champ simply grabbed it and stared, confused, before deeming Sonic alright and snuggling into his hold with a small grunt. Once they were given the 'okay' the rest relaxed and went back to doing whatever they wanted to earlier.

"He's hugging me!" Sonic whisper-yelled "What do I do??"

"Entertain them," Shadow shrugged "I'll go find some toys or something similar. Your room is already a jungle, I might as well bring some down." He waved for the hive to stay where they were, but of course one disobeyed and hopped up onto his shoulder to join him on his trip.

"Can I name them?"

"Knock yourself out."

He beamed with excitement and plopped himself on the floor, setting all the kids in front of him before realizing he actually had zero names in mind.

"Hey!" He gasped, then pointed to one randomly. "Your name is Zero, okay?"

With the kitsune and chameleon, information slowly turned to a crawl.

"How do you think he found out about them?" Tails asked, leaning closer to the computer for a second as Espio paced behind him.

"Shadow said that he and Mephiles faught not too long ago, so one of them were probably with him, then."

"He came to our house super mad, talking about 'Chao Hybrids.' Think that has anything to do with anything?" The fox kit leaned back in the chair with a groan, mentally going over the information in his head. From what was written down, Mephiles had betrayed the doctor after telling him he had a plan, but then the journal entries about Mephiles stopped right there.

"Oh, those things? Vector, Charmy, and I passed this stupid squirrel that was selling these things in a box. They looked like kids, from what I could see. We just ignored him and walked past, but there was a huge crowd gathering there." The chameleon shrugged and leaned back onto a pile of boxes, not caring when they started to crumple under his weight because they were filled with nothing but magazines anyway.

For some reason, the room felt colder.

Tails began to fiddle with the computer, mind racing as he pulled up a map of the security cameras in the general area surrounding the GUN facility. "...I know what those are, Shadow and I..." he sighed, but didn't continue.

"Care to fill me in, fox?" The tenor, raspy voice made them whip their heads in each and every direction to find the source, only for the hedgehog himself to sprout from the ground and grip Tails' neck harshly.

"Let him go!" Espio snarled, attempting to jump up, but his legs were caught fast in a snarl of tendrils coming from the ground. He cursed and tried to break free while Tails gasped. In a last ditch effort, the chameleon ran his fingers over his communicator to turn it on and cover the speaker.

"L-let--," The kit wheezed, so Mephiles loosened his hold.

"What are they? Why do they hold so much power? How come only Shadow can access such power?" With each question, he swung the kit from one side to the other.

Espio tried his hardest to free himself now, cutting at the tendrils with whatever was closeset to him while Tails spun his namesakes for a distraction. Nothing worked. Mephiles growled, and, just for a second, turned to his crystalized form just to return again.

" _Where are they? Speak, you insolent fo--!"_

A computer monitor sailing across the room knocked both of them down for only a beat, but it was long enough for the fox to get free and crawl backwards out of reach of the now rightfully pissed off dark hedgehog. He turned to see who threw it just to find Vector, standing tall and snarling while Charmy dashed off to hide. They both just now came back, and what great timing they had.

Mephiles glared and stood, readying himself to battle. As Vector ran towards him and lifted his fist in a punch, the hedgehog teleported and vanished.

xox

 _yo remember when i said I would post this yesterday? I got really worn out from the doc and could barely do anything, let alone stay awake long enough to type._

 _isn't my best chapter. Transformation later tonight or tomorrow._


	13. And What Can You Do?

With happiness Sonic named, picked up, and played with every single hivemind he could. Their fur was thin but fluffy and soft, with their claws actually more gentle, like fingernails compared to actual claws. They loved for their ears to be scratched and hated when their tails were touched, and Shadow was glad to watch Sonic stand up each one to the wall and mark a line on where they stood. Of course, since they were all identical other than a change in markings here or there to tell them apart, all the lines overlapped. It didn't stop Sonic from drawing them all, though, happily telling Shadow that they were all a foot and a half tall already which was pretty big considering that they were bumbling bundles when they were first created.

"That doesn't suprise me, I grew rapidly after my creation day. I suspect they'll react the same way." Shadow called from the kitchen, and the blue hedgehog chuckled lightly.

"Then how come you're just _barely_ taller than me?" He called back and could just _hear_ the other roll his eyes.

"I'm sure you know that you stop growing when you reach your adult height." He smiled "Or maybe that's because you aren't an adult?"

"I wouldn't want to be an old coot like you!" he huffed. When he didn't get an answer, thinking he was successful and making Shadow speechless, Sonic proudly set down the two he currently held to find out what exactly the other was doing in the kitchen for so long.

"Hey honey, what's for dinner?" He cooed playfully, wrapping his arms around Shadow from behind just for the ebony to turn and point a newly cleaned and sharpened knife in his face inches away from his nose.

"Blue hedgehog stew." Shadow answered, not entirely embarrassed to show a small smile when the other backed away with hands raised. "I'm joking."

"I dunno, Shads. I can't entirely say that the last few times we met up have been all that friendly to trust that answer yet." Though, as he spoke, he lowered his hands and turned back to the hive. "No, but, really, don't these guys gotta eat or something?

Shadow took the knife with him into the livingroom, which in retrospect didn't look like a very family friendly thing, and sat down on the floor. Sonic's question went entirely ignored so the blue blur simply followed him, mentally wonder when they would need chaos energy again. Shadow pulled Champ towards him just for the child to look on in both slight fear and confusion.

For a second Sonic mentally debated picking up the child. "Knives go in the kitchen." He said instead, but went ignored once again.

"I'm showing you what some of them can do. They each have a different ability from me; Champ can heal external wounds." The sentence was ended with Shadow outstretching his arm and cutting a slit through it, hissing through his teeth at the sharp pain while Sonic flinched back.

"Woah-woah-woah! Why'd--"

Champ glared at Shadow for purposefully injuring himself but rose his tail, making quick, slashing movements just above the cut. Golden and green stitches crossed over them and the injury sealed shut in an instant. Sonic's surprise turned from shock to awe and he went silent, simply staring at the hivemind as it inspected the damage before yanking the knife away and running off with it.

"Don't run with knives!" Shadow called after it, looking to Sonic in hopes he would catch him and take back the tool, but was met with a look of pure excitement.

" _Dude's so cool!!"_ He shouted, running over to pick up another one. "What does _she_ do!?"

"Strength. She was the one who tore the vent off the wall so they could escape." He wasn't gonna let that go, tilting his head just enough so Sonic _knew_ he was still pissed about that. He pointed to another. "That one has intelligence and taught everyone to walk upright."

Shadow continued to list the attributes of everyone else, but Sonic stopped listening two names in when Champ started acting antsy. The knife he had stolen was long gone, probably lodged under somewhere, but he was on high alert and looking around way too frantically for something _not_ to be there.

"Shads," the blue hedgehog whispered, and, trying not to be so suspicious, nodded towards the freaked out child.

Shadow was concerned alright and called him over, just for Steve to quickly follow and cuddle up to him weakly. The others started getting sluggish and curled up around him, barely leaning room for one another to the point where they were climbing atop themselves. Champ was the only one still active, refusing to lay down.

"I think they need a--"

"I should have figured it'd know my presence by now." Came a deep voice, Mephiles climbing up from Sonic's shadow to sit on the back of the couch. "I wondered what each of them were capable of; thank you so much for telling me, brother."

"We are _not_ brothers." Shadow snarled, and, with newfound love for the little guys, Sonic hissed too and stood closer to them. "And, it's _he_ , not _it._ "

Shadow feared standing in case he would wake them as they were trying to conserve energy, but he also feared taking out his chaos emerald for them to feed off of in case Mephiles would gain more interest in attacking. Champ jumped up onto Sonic's shoulder, so oddly big that he was crouched like a gargoyle and held onto Sonic's head for balance, but it didn't stop him from voicing his dirty-tongued opinion about the dark hedgehog in front of him.

It wasn't the time, but a suppressed snicker escaped Shadow's throat as the blue hedgehog moved to put the child back next to Shadow.

"You know, you're supposed to knock first before you enter someone's house." Sonic joked and tried to crack a smile but it looked far more angry than silly "And I think you should leave and try it again."

"Well, well." Mephiles stood, dragging his feet as he walked closer. "I think you should do what you're good at and run away, you blue rat." After that he sent a barrage of chaos arrows towards them both.

Sonic took the brunt of that hit by dashing forward to elbow the other in the chest. Fur was burned and singed off as a flash of light filled the room, and as he got ready for impact he tripped and landed on the couch to turn around to see that he was suddenly all alone. Well, Mephiles was still there. He heard him whisper 'where...?' under his breath in partial confusion but didn't give him a chance to think about it, spin dashing the dark hedgehog and making him crash into the wall.

"Damn you!" Mephiles charged up a chaos spear and held it, running at the other head on.

Knowing his trick Sonic spun around last minute and caught his hand milliseconds before he was stabbed. He jumped and grabbed the blade of energy to absorb it for himself though he knew it would burn, so Mephiles was quick to create a small chaos blast to knock him away.

Sonic had no idea where Shadow was, or what he was doing, but he sure hoped he was buying the other time.

The fight escalated heavily until they bles up a wall and ended up outside, the dark hedgehog speeding off just to have blue on his tail tackle him to the ground. Clones distracted him but he was determined to give Shadow and the hive as much time as possible to escape.

Shadow himself was on the run, somehow not weighed down by the eight foot and a half tall children clinging to his body in any way possible. Though he wasn't weighed, wing resistance was way up.

Gun was out of the question. Though it was repaired, it could be easily damaged again. Rouge also couldn't help as her house was small and easily destructible. It left him with two choices, Eggman or Knuckles, and he didn't want to take his chances with Eggman in fear he'd take his hive to experiment on them.

" _My_ Hive," he whispered to himself, feeling a small beat of pride enter his chest. Full of fear and panic, he realized it wasn't for himself, it was for his Hive. He was worried for them and them only.

The words, though faint and whispered, where heard and felt to his Hive and they nuzzled into him despite their tired weakness.

The simple action new determination to protect them at all costs, so Shadow gripped onto the chaos emerald nestled in his quills. In a flash of light, they stood in the warm green glow of the Master Emerald.

Knuckles' not so manly scream tore him out of his thoughts and he flinched, both of them making silent, awkward eye contact.

"So... uh... nice kids." Knuckles hesitated and mumbled, very unsure how to handle the situation. How long was he on the island that Shadow had eight kids??

"Thanks." A quick nod and the hive climbed off him, giving him looks of confusion and sadness. Though they were very innocent, they still understood his thoughts and exactly what he was going to do.

He was going to leave them.

"Knuckles, I trust you. Please keep them safe, and don't let them out of your sight." he looked at the echidna with nothing but respect "Let them sit by the master. I promise to come back soon."

Knuckles noted the seriousness and nodded, watching with wide eyes as Shadow kneeled and let them all hug him as he rubbed their heads and backs. One crawled onto him, but right away they were caught and put back with the others. The hive then crawled over to Knuckles and sat just around the large gem, soaking up her energy as Shadow descended the stairs and soon disappeared in a flash of light. He never saw the other act so... tender before.

Whimpers started up right away.

"Hey, don't cry. From what I know about Shadow, he always keeps his promises." He tried, and though it was well appreciated, they weren't in the mood to listen and simply turned away to recuperate.

xox

 _oh man_

 _yes grammar is bad i understand and I am sorry_


	14. Don't Touch

The hive sat, soundlessly, near the Master Emerald. They were fully healed by now, but continued to stare off into the distance at the ever-far city. With every passing minute, pain tingled through their bodies. Emotions swirled through their minds. All of them were coming from Shadow, all of them about how much he was protecting His Hive.

Knuckles attempted to comfort them a bit more, but, ultimately, he was ignored.

Shadow was out of reach and fighting and in pain, everything the hive hated and vowed to stop. He had did this on purpose. There was no way they would be able to reach him, and Knuckles wasn't even known enough for them to turn to him for help.

Pain, endless waves of pain traveled in thick bundles at a time through their tiny bodies, but not once did Shadow regret what he did. Not once did he fear the hive would be in danger.

But, no matter, they _had_ to try. They had to get to him, their Master, their Father, Shadow. The Hive needed Shadow and Shadow needed the Hive.

Minds made up, they stood. The wind blew swiftly and the master began to glow brightly, almost sensing their plan. Palms outstretched they placed one on the gem's surface and Knuckles grew wary.

"Whatever you're planning, it isn't going to work. You're too far and too small get there. Shadow left me in charge for a reason!" He stressed, but each word was dismissed.

They were too small, and too far, yes, but what Shadow said before told them otherwise. They're too far and weak on their own, but, together, all eight of them equalled another copy of Shadow. Surely, one of them could teleport just as he had done to them earlier to get them to Angel Island.

The Master felt their energy traveling together, glowing brighter with each second they held steady, their will growing stronger. Knuckles stood in front of them this time, arms held high to the emerald. "What are you doing!? We're supposed to be protecting them!"

The eight let go and charged, sprinting past Knuckles and down the altar. The echidna spun around just to stare in awe, seeing one holding the hands of the other seven, speeding past just as cast as Sonic would. As fast as _Shadow_ would. They continued across the grass with no difficulty as Knuckles sat down right away, no chance of catching them. The grass began to thin, and then, they jumped, plummeting towards the deep blue ocean. With a bright flash of light, they were gone.

The real Shadow himself quickly stood and jumped out of the way of an oncoming blast, getting knocked back anyway from the force of it and skidding across the ground. Mid-flip, he righted himself onto all fours, dragging his feet before launching himself forward. Red aura of pure energy circled him as he and Mephiles clashed, blows been traded until a well-times kick sent Shadow right back to the ground. He laid there, bleeding from so many places that he couldn't bring himself to stand at first. But, he needed to keep his hive safe, and he needed to stay alive for them. For their sake, they needed him. He slowly got back to his feet and ignored the warm liquid dripping down his brow.

"Why must you make things difficult!?" The dark one screamed, raising his hands just for them to be yanked back over his head painfully.

"Maybe because you're a big meanie," Sonic grinned and wrapped his legs around his middle, pulling down as hard as he could and using his body as an anchor. Mephiles lost balanced and focus and crashed into the ground, Sonic jumping off just in time to be caught by Tails. There was no time to thank the fox before he was shoved forwards back into the action, and, while he didn't want Tails getting involved and hurt more than he was, he found it pretty maddening to get thrown back right away.

Espio and Vector gave him a break by distracting Mephiles, charging him just for Shadow to teleport behind him and knock him up into the air. He didn't get a shot to right himself as he was kicked in the stomach seconds before Shadow slammed both fists down on his head and knocked him to the ground.

Mephiles was back to his feet right away and dusted himself off as if the attack meant nothing. Shadow landed seconds after him, struggling to even stand upright now.

"Where's your precious children? Your tiny pests?" Mephiles laughed, clones starting to spawn around Shadow now and slowly closing in.

"Safe from you." was his simple answer, ignoring his pains and forcing himself to stand tall and focus. The clones began to run back and forth, getting closer with every step. He was so tired.

"Shadow!" Espio bounded through and knocked him out the circle of hate right as bolts of energy landed down where he once stood, catching the tail end of the chameleon as he now hissed and looked at his scorched limb.

"Sorry," Shadow whispered, trying to go back into a fighting stance, but it just wasn't happening. He was bleeding heavily and it was so cold. "I'm losing it."

Mephiles rolled his eyes and sent a single chaos spear towards his side but he dodged it. "This could had ended nicely if you simply told me where those brats were."

"No thanks!" Sonic's feet connected to Mephiles' head in a deliberate stomp, but he didn't get a chance to kick off and escape when his ankle was caught in a crystal clawed hand and sliced into. He collapsed in pain and Vector was to the rescue, punching the dark hedgehog in the jaw and quickly running off with Sonic under his arm. "You big stupid jerk!" he cried over his shoulder.

Anger fueled him and he turned to Shadow now, claws raised and clones spawning again. He and Espio pressed their backs together, looking around in desperation.

"Where _are **THEY!?"**_

Before anything else could happen, an explosion of a very powerful Chaos Blast sent everything flying. Mephiles peeled himself out from the nearest building in slow pain.

"I didn't know you had that in you, why didn't you use it earlier!?" Espio sighed and glared, not letting himself relax yet. The dust slowly began to clear.

"I didn't."

There stood, in the middle of the small crater she created, a hivemind full of rage. She seethed pure death threats from between her teeth, claws spread and tail swishing back and forth.

"Streak!" Sonic called out in happiness, but she was in no mood for reunions.

She raised her head in a roar and seven more jumped out to join her, forming a protective circle around Shadow. If he could translate all of what they were saying into perfect english, he was sure he would probably be sued.

"How did...?" He didn't bother to finish as Tails screamed in surprise for him, the hive still not reacting to their voices.

Mephiles sauntered over to them, hands hanging down and head drooped. "So, that's the power you possess, hm?"

Something snapped within Shadow and he snarled, fists balling at his sides. He felt Champ hop onto his shoulder, tail going to work on his wounds. "You stay the _hell_ away from my Hive."

The other shrugged, "No." and raised his hand. Right away, sensing the oncoming threat, Champ barked a warning. Shadow raced out the way, the hive following around as if he wasn't moving fast at all. It made his heart swell when he jumped and crashed down onto the dark hedgehog to hear eight of the collisions right after his.

Each one had something to show him, from speed to strength, and each was just as powerful as his. He was so proud of his eight destructive children and when one of them threw a mailbox at Mephiles' face, he nearly burst with tears. Mephiles was being beaten by _children_. The best part was after they placed a nice attack, they would turn around and grin ear to ear at him, as if saying "look, Shadow! I did it!"

Espio and Vector slunk off to the sidelines, peeking in on Tails, Sonic, and Charmy. They hid behind some tall concrete barrier, and, based on how well it held up so far, was some pretty good coverage.

"So, come here often?" Vector started, and Sonic looked at him and hissed a laugh.

"He's in bad shape," Charmy whispered, tying off the knot on Sonic's ankle. It had been heavily slashed and was too painful to move too much, but luckily his tendon went untouched.

"My ankle's messed up real bad. I can run, but not fast." Sonic looked down at his shoddy bandage, spotting with blood.

"Yeah, and we don't have anything better on hand without having to go out there. I'm so shocked that the hive came to protect Shadow from being so far away!" Tails was way more excited than he should've been, but it was to be expected.

"I can sneak--" He was cut off by a scream of pure anguish, all five of them turning to peek over the barrier. Their stomachs dropped.

There stood Mephiles, having snatched one of the hiveminds in the middle of an attack and drained it of nearly all of its chaos energy. It hung to his life by threads. He held the limp creature by its tail like a dead rat, swinging it back and forth. teasingly. "Not so all and mighty now, hm? You're down one, seven to g--"

Shadow's fist collided to his face and the hivemind was flung from his hand, quickly being saved by another. They backed up.

Mephiles tried to stand just for his chest to get stomped from Shadow falling from the sky onto him. He sunk into the ground instead and the ebony hedgehog looked up, snarling, hissing, and spitting. His red aura was back, brighter and larger than before. He spoke only in his alien tongue and tracked the dark one's every single move without having to turn his head. He spun and kicked, knocking Mephiles back just a split second before he got the chance to attack.

"Ohh, you done messed up, son." Charmy whispered, earning looks from the others. He grinned "Look how mad Shadow is!"

He was a bit incorrect. Shadow wasn't mad, he was _pissed_. His inhibitor rings glowed in warning with every blow he and Mephiles shared until they snapped and fell off, the latter getting slammed into the same couple of buildings he hit so many times, but this time traveling through a few walls. He heard screams of terror behind him but struggled to his feet and ignored them, barreling himself out of the same hole he created. His claws were extended to slice through anything he touched and yet his wrists were grabbed before they could even make contact with anything.

Shadow swung down overhead and down Mephiles went, crashing into the ground with so much force that a puff of black and purple smoke surrounded him, and he laid in his regular shadow form.

He was exhausted and couldn't dare try to keep up in this form, but he was determined and stubborn. Mephiles rolled onto his back just as Shadow pinned him to the ground, letting the other get a good, close look at him. His teeth were bared and his eyes wide, pupils shrunken and slitted and pure rage. His quills were bristled so much he looked more like a porcupine than a hedgehog, and though Mephiles didn't get with a single spin-dash since Shadow's temper changed, he was sure he'd get destroyed by his quills now.

"You seem upset." He laughed and raised his legs to kick him off, but they didn't budge. He stabbed Shadow's side with a chaos spear instead but all that did was give him another burst of energy. Mephiles started feeling a bit more tired than he should and couldn't keep his head up much longer. Shadow grinned.

"Think we should step in?" Tails whispered, shyly turning away from the fight when he saw Shadow raise his fist.

"No way! He might go after us instead!"

"Mephiles is too distracted right now."

"I don't mean Mephiles."

The five huddled back down to play a round of Rock Paper Scissors, but an increase of sounds behind them made them peek over.

The hive was taking care of Shadow now, dragging a kicking and screaming hedgehog away from a very bloody and knocked out Mephiles lying out on the ground. Within seconds, Shadow began to calm and cuddle the child that had passed out before, laying the chaos emerald from his quills on the ground next to his head. The hive crowded Shadow and climbed on top of him, all finding a comfy spot to lay and sleep. Shadow himself looked around all of them with a soft smile before black clawed at his vision and he passed out.

xox

 _i won't lie and say I've been slowly working on this, because I wasn't. Stuff's been happening and I've just been tired and drained. The first 400 words were written while listening to a song, and I finish now by having listened to 1:17:45 of songs from the same artist_

 _i wanna die this was a pain_

 _also uh fuck what the hell is the name of my other story???_

 _Mask Off is coming tonight or tomorrow Id even fuckin know anymore I'm so sorry._

 _how abt this-- If anyone wants a chapter to a story published, send me a PM about it and I'll do it **that day.** Sound like a deal? Alright_

(I'll still update when the time comes, I'll just work faster that way)


	15. Wonder

Shadow the hedgehog laid, unconsious, on the couch of Sonic and Tails' home. He had been that way for almost two days now.

When he was first carried over on Sonic's back, the hive buzzing around his feet all in constant worry, it only seemed like he was asleep and it bothered the brothers why the hive refused to calm down. When he was first laid down, all eight kids climbed onto Shadow's lap, stomach, and chest in any way possible, refusing to leave him no matter how many times they were knocked off to 'let Shadow breathe.' It took a few hours for the other two to figure out why. Shadow wasn't waking up; he wasn't responding to _anything_.

At first, the hive mind known as Steve stuck Shadow with his tail tip in hopes of healing any internal wounds, sitting patiently for all about five seconds before suddenly stabbing Shadow again, and again, and would have continued had he not been stopped. Champ checked Shadow over many, many times for any injuries he missed that could have prevented him from waking up, but nothing was there. He even healed the small markings Steve had created before. Everyone attempted to do something to wake Shadow up.

Tails tried to tell them that he was too weak to wake up right away, and that whatever Robotnic gave Mephiles gave him the ability to sap his energy within seconds. He tried to convince them that removing his gloves, shoes, and inhibitor rings would help him heal faster, but none listened and attacked anyone that dare go near them.

This had continued for a week now, before Sonic lost it.

"Hey."

The hive looked up. None of them had left to eat. Every one refused to eat, even when offered it. They all looked terrible and starving, but each about as pissed as a honey badger with a thorn in his paw. They didn't even get to show a threat before Sonic stomped up to them.

"I've known Shadow longer than you've ever existed. I've seen him pass out like this. You guys? Making him worse. You keep this up, not only will Shadow get sicker until he goes into a coma, but I'm pretty sure you'll die. I don't remember Tails stating that you were immortal like him. You think he wants to wake up to eight dead--?"

He didn't get to finish before one stood up and hissed something at him. Again, the language barrier prevented him from understanding, but there was one word they said. "Shadow."

"If you get me, get off _him_ so he can heal." Sonic crossed his arms over his chest, and, slowly, finally, they began to leave Shadow alone. Tails came up from the lab just as they did, but was too distracted to care.

He went over to Shadow and rubbed at the bags under his eyes. "Can you try to feed those guys again? I'm..." He didn't finish. He had been doing countless research since they came back, save for the three times he attempted to feed the hive so they wouldn't starve.

Sonic only nodded and left to fix up some sandwiches, as by now the kids were clearly off milk.

Shadow had been running on nearly empty from holding Mephiles back for so long, he was on his last legs until he messed with one of the hive. He gained a certain boost of energy from it, so strong he was able to knock him out of his chrystalized form, but left both of them drained of everything they had.

The Chaotix parted ways after disposing of Mephiles, where they didn't say, leaving Shadow in their arms.

Tails blinked away sleep as he laid Shadow's bare hands on the emerald now laying on his chest, suppressing a yawn as well. He found nothing new. Eggman has quieted, and all of them knew he wasn't done yet. He probably backed down to fix up whatever he and Mephiles had planned, anyways.

"Tails," Came Shadow, voice rough and hoarse from lack of speaking. A gentle growl and it was cleared. "Where am I?"

Tail looked up once again, his head having drooped down as sleep tugged at him. Shadow's eyes were closed but he was clearly awake, and Tails quickly stood back up. "Ah, our house. How do you feel?"

"Truthfully, like shit."

The fox folded back his ears and whistled quietly. "Oh..."

"Where's my hive? They were over me earlier, but I can't feel them anymore." He tried to open his eyes or turn his head, or even just move in any sort of way, but he couldn't. Speaking seemed to be the easiest thing, which wasn't saying much. He grew winded easily trying to speak a simple sentence.

"Oh, Sonic got them off so they could eat. They haven't really left you since you passed out." Tails went on to tell him how long he was out, and what happened since then. He even mentioned Knuckles coming to visit, and telling Shadow's sleeping form that he was sorry for failing but was happy he made it out alive.

Eventually, when Shadow was able to open his eyes, he hissed at how bright the room was before slowly adjusting. At his sound of discomfort, right away eight little children jumped up onto him, squeeling his name and chanting in their alien tongue like he could fulling understand them. He simply chuckled at their antics, as he was still far too weak to do anything.

It wasn't like he was in pain, he was just... numb. He could feel the pressure of them sitting and laying on him, but he was numb to everything else. Had Tails not moved his arms for him, and had the hive not jumped on him, he would have been worried he'd been paralized.

"How long am I going to be like this?" the agent sighed, looking over to see Sonic placing down a plate of two sandwiches as he ate his own. Tails was positively passed out on the kitchen counter.

"Uh, based off what my lil bro said a while ago, a few more days. You were really tapped out of chaos energy to the point where _I_ had to hold that emerald in one hand and hold hands with you until your body could absorb it normally."

"Ugh, I had to hold hands with _you_? Luckily I was unconsious." It was all in good fun. He wanted to eat, but, again, he couldn't move no matter how much he wanted to.

What neither noticed was the hive now looking down at their hands. They touched the Master Emerald not that long ago, right? Not once did they use the energy it gave them. They didn't need to.

Faintly, each placed one hand down onto Shadow's chest, and when they ran out of room, moved to his stomach. Sonic made a face in confusion, making Shadow wonder why and attempt to look down to see, just to feel a powerful surge of energy jolt up and down his spine. It felt like everything was burning and freezing at once, like every single muscle and bone were being stretched and shattered and pressed between cold stones.

Then it all ended, and Shadow sat up ridged, panting deeply. Sonic was right there with a hand place carefully on his back, supporting the agent from toppling over.

"What? What was that? Are you okay? What did they do?" He nearly said it all in once sentence, but Shadow didn't answer any. His breathing was quick and deep as the pain slowly fell away, leaving just the remains of possibly getting hit by a train and then thrown out a jet just to crash into the side of a mountain.

When he finally got himself back together, Shadow glared down at his hive.

"There's a good reason why I don't heal at the Master." Shadow continued on by eating the sandwich he so longed for. "Thank you, but please never do that again."

xox

this has to be short for reasons, I'm sooo sorry

i love u


	16. uhh

_hi. this is really experimental, so please dont get upset._

Many days had passed since the entire Mephiles incident. Thought there was still pretty clear mystery surrounding the subject, Shadow didn't like to talk about it, so it was hardly even addressed.

The hiveminds had grown much during the short time, and they all had names now. Each had a seperate trait, and each could easily be told apart. Everyone was about half their height, coming up to Shadow's stomach or lower ribs, meaning they were too large to easily carry a lot if not all of them at once anymore.

Sonic yawned and stretched out on the couch, fully bothering a hivemind that decided that his lap was a perfect place to sleep as he turned to look towards the kitchen.

"Shads? Home yet?" he called, voice croaking as he tried to rub the sleep from his eyes. The child crawled off onto the other side of the couch, laying with the rest of his brothers and sisters who were all irritated at the sudden extra weight. "What time is it?

"It's six thirty AM, Sonic. And I don't live here, remember?" The ebony hedgehog spoke evenly, aware that Sonic was only waking up because he smelled food. He was forced to cook early to compensate for the eleven mouths to feed, save for himself. After how much snacking he's done along the way, he couldn't possibly want a plate for himself.

"Crap, yeah. Hey, uh, I'm awake," he started, voice deepening a bit as he yawned "Need... help, or something?"

"Yes."

Sonic secretly hoped Shadow wouldn't take him up on his offer, but then again, when did Shadow ever make anything convenient? He heaved himself up, where everyone available took his spot and left him no more room even if he wanted to sit down again. "Okay," he whispered, trudging into the kitchen just to see the table somewhat set already with a single mug of coffee at his place.

"This for me?"

"Yes." Shadow glanced at him, then towards the couch. "That couldn't possibly be comfortable."

Sonic blew a raspberry before taking a few careful sips. "It's _never_ been comfortable. I'm regretting letting Knux sleep over."

Shadow then began serving up three plates and wrapped them in clingwrap to keep it fresh and warm, right after fighting with a strand of it that got caught on his fingers from static cling. "That was my fault. The kids were getting bigger and stronger and I couldn't possibly leave them unsupervised to destroy your home while I worked."

He didn't say anything at first, simply enjoying his coffee. Warm and just a bit sweet, but it did have a certain bitterness. He normally didn't like bitter coffee, but today he actually liked it. He also didn't touch on how Shadow said 'the kids'. "Yep. Don't beat yourself up, they got big fast, but Tails said that they're now growing so slow that it'll take years for them to get to normal height."

"They used to be able to ride on my shoulders."

"Everyone was at one point, Shads. Things grow up."

There was a pause in the air, but not awkward. A comfortable silence in which the two simply thought, Shadow turned away to prepare small breakfast plates for the hiveminds while Sonic nursed his coffee with a content smile.

Then, the smile waned. "Shadow,"

"I _do not_ want to talk or think about it, Sonic."

He flinched, "I wasn't gonna say that. I was going to say, do you think you can still handle all of them... at once?"

When he finaly finished that last plate, Shadow turned around and leaned against the counter. Their food could cool a bit; they once ate fistfuls of dirt because they spilled their juice in it, he was sure they didn't care about cool breakfast. "What do you mean?"

"I mean..." Sonic fiddled with the handle of his mug, coffee now a bit too hot to drink right now. "There's eight of them, and each has a different learning skill and each skill needs different lengths of time to master," he looked up, catching Shadow maintaining direct eye contact. His expression was blank. "They're doing really well with all the tests and the illness tests, but they still need to be... well, themselves, but you don't..."

Sonic looked into the swirling coffee, ears folding back as he ran his fingers

"I don't what? Finish the sentence." Ruby eyes narrowed dangerously at what the other was suggesting.

"I... don't know, really. I'm not gonna dance around the subject anymore, so: I think you might need help. Other than leaving them here to sleep and eat, they need to get out. Knuckles has already started liking one of them, the girl with all that strength, and Tails and I like Champ and Steve." He shrugged "I know you're being a great dad, Shadow, but--"

A plate was roughly dropped in front of him, food almost toppling out of it as he barely stopped the bowl from spilling over.

"Breakfast is ready." Shadow growled, then huffed nearly silently and in filled eight children, each scrambling for their plates and eating well before they got close to any chair.

"Shadow," said 'great dad' began to walk away, ignoring Sonic completely. "Shadow, you aren't listening. Shad--"

And he was gone, out the front door. Sonic groaned a bit louder than he tried to, alarming the hiveminds into paying attention to the surroundings than just their food.

As Knuckles and Tails came downstairs, groggy and mumbling that it was still too early for them even though an hour had passed before Shadow was done cooking, the children narrowed their eyes and stormed off.

"Not you guys too!" Sonic called out "And you're not even going to finish your food!?"

"Bad bloo," One of them chanted, and while it was impressive that their English was getting better and thag they were able to walk instead of crawl now, being called a 'bad bloo' by a rather angry childish voice couldn't be taken seriously. "Bad! No!" The rest chanted in delayed unison, and Sonic deflated in his chair, picking at his food now.

Tails looked at the door as it slammed shut, taking a careful seat and unwrapping his plate. "What was that about, Sonic?"

Knuckles sat as well but didn't speak, simply shoveljng food into his mouth. The blue hedgehog frowned.

"All I did was suggest that Shadow needed to think and see if he could handle all eight of them still!" He stabbed the table with his fork, folding back his ears as he pried it back out from the wood and rubbed his fingers on the marred surface. "They're growing up now, and each of them are different and need different people to help them do what they do best."

Knuckles paused long enough to grunt. "So you told a dad to give up his children because he's not good enough anymore?"

"No! I--" he then stopped, realizing fully that what he said _did_ sound a little... no actually _very_ rude. Shadow was right to be upset with him.

"Sonic," Tails whined, his namesakes twitching quite robotically as he dragged his hand down his face in exasperation. "If anything, they should go so _school_ , not be given up. Go say sorry and correct yourself."

It was odd that his little brother and old friend were the ones giving him advice and not the other way around, but he heeded it, standing up to excuse himself and go to the front door.

The short walk from the kitchen through the living room felt like miles yet somehow wasn't long enough at the same time, and as he gripped the handle and slowly opened the door, he spotted Shadow. He was sat on a downed tree, one of his children on each leg while one styled his quills. They rest happliy talked to each other and their father in a mix of broken english and their alien tongue.

It was... a wholesome scene.

xoxo

 _hewwo. i didn't think i would ever write this, yet here it is. those who deleted hive mind from your favourites: idk if i'll continue this. there was one review asking for a continuation, so..._

 _this is hella Not beta read, so theres probably tons of mistakes_


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